Franz Kohler News
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2024-05-13
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2023-08-30 06:28:00
[…] principals comprised Klaus Florian Vogt (Siegmund), Georg Zeppenfeld (Hunding), Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan), Elisabeth Teige (Sieglinde), Christa Mayer (Fricka) and, of course, Catherine Foster (Brünnhilde) who, by the way, becomes only the third British soprano - but the first English singer, may I add - to have sung Brünnhilde at Bayreuth. She excelled in the role and keeps good company with the likes of Welsh-born singers, Dame Anne Evans and Dame Gwyneth Jones. Wagner: Siegfried - Daniela Kohler, Andreas Schager - Bayreuth Festival 2023 (Photo: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath)When the curtain lifts on Siegfried one’s greeted by Mime rumbling about in his scruffy den with the greedy, greasy and unprincipled occupant seen as a wizard running a puppet show (a pregnant Sieglinde is one of his puppets!) while Siegfried, barging in from the forest full of high spirits, gets straight down to business of forging Nothung. In comparison to Mime’s junkyard den, […]
2022-08-04 17:19:00
Bayreuth Festival (3) - Siegfried, 3 August 2022
FestspielhausSiegfried – Andreas Schager Mime – Arnold Bezuyen Wanderer – Tomasz Koniezcny Alberich – Olafur Sigurdarson Fafner – Wilhelm Schwinghammer Erda – Okka von der Damerau Brünnhilde – Daniela Köhler Woodbird – Alexandra Steiner Young Hagen – Branko Buchberger Grane – Igor Schwab Valentin Schwarz (director) Andrea Cozzi (designs) Andy Besuch (costumes) Konrad Kuhn (dramaturgy) Reinhard Traub (lighting)Bayreuth Festival Orchestra Cornelius Meister (conductor) This Siegfried made for pretty miserable music drama, I am afraid, the considerable qualities of the music ‘half’ notwithstanding. In a peculiar way, Wagner’s vision was vindicated. His works are not operas, nor are they intended to be. They may well impress in concert performances or in audio-only experiences at home—phenomena worthy of greater attention—but they need to impress musically and dramatically in the theatre, the whole so much more than the sum of its parts. One never knows what might be pulled out […]
2022-08-03 10:03:00
Bayreuth Festival (2): Die Walküre, 1 August 2022
FestspielhausSiegmund – Klaus Florian Vogt Hunding – Georg Zeppenfeld Wotan – Tomasz Konieczny, Michael Kupfer-Radecky Sieglinde – Lise Davidsen Brünnhilde – Iréne Theorin Fricka, Schwertleite – Christa Mayer Gerhilde – Kelly God Ortlinde – Brit-Tone Müllertz Waltraute – Stéphanie Müther Helmwige – Daniela Köhler Siegrune – Stephanie Houtzeel Grimgerde – Marie Henriette Reinhold Rossweiße – Katie Stevenson Grane – Igor Schwab Valentin Schwarz (director) Andrea Cozzi (designs) Andy Besuch (costumes) Konrad Kuhn (dramaturgy) Reinhard Traub (lighting) Bayreuth Festival Orchestra Cornelius Meister (conductor) The boos are getting louder: not, I think, for the musicians, but for the production of Valentin Schwarz, who has yet to appear for a curtain-call. That need be no bad thing artistically, though the practice itself is fascistic; should a bourgeois audience feel satisfied with what it has consumed, it will be a disturbing outcome for art. Here, though, the open mind I am […]
2022-02-22 09:00:41
This year the Handel Festival Halle is celebrating its centenary. That first festival in Handel's birthplace in 1922 is one of the defining moments of the modern revival of interest in Handel's wider music. The Hallisches Händelfest in 1922 concluded with a performance of Handel's Orlando, and the 2022 centenary festival, which runs from 27 May to 12 June 2022 will being with a new production of Orlando conducted by Christian Curnyn and directed by Walter Sutcliffe, the new artistic director of Halle Opera. The 1922 festival also included Susanna and Semele, both of which are being performed in 2022 along with a wide range of other works. After that first festival, the Halle Handel Society was formed in 1925 and a second festival took place in 1929 with a third in 1935. The fourth festival took place in 1949, and since 1952 the festival has become annual. Other operas […]