Ben Heppner: Tristan und Isolde: Welsh National Opera (WNO) - 2012 Update

Update: We provide a Photo Preview here

I did say I would try to keep you updated. However, given that it is 12 months to first night, news is not "coming thick and fast" - as would be expected. Nevertheless, WNO have very kindly provided a little more detailed  information, together with some images of the 2006 revival. I have also included some reviews of the production from 2006.

Sung in German with English surtitles (Welsh in Wales Millennium Centre) First night 19 May 2012.

Photo: Bill Cooper

Tristan                                       Ben Heppner

King Marke                                Matthew Best

Isolde                                        Ann Petersen

Kurwenal                                   Phillip Joll

Melot                                         Simon Thorpe

Brangaene                                Susan Bickley

Shepherd                                  Chorus

Helmsman                                 Chorus

Sailor                                        Chorus

                                               

Conductor                                 Lothar Koenigs

                                               

Original Director                        Yannis Kokkos

Revival Director                         Peter Watson

Designer                                   Yannis Kokkos

Lighting Designer                      Guido Levi

Original Movement Director        Kate Flatt

Assistant Designer                    Muriel Trembleau

Staff Director                            Carmen Jakobi

Co-production with Scottish Opera

Reviews (2006 revival):

Rian Evans

The Guardian,  Monday 2 October 2006 

"Yannis Kokkos's 1993 staging of Tristan und Isolde for Welsh National Opera suggested an integrity of concept that would not date - and so it has proved. In Peter Watson's revival, its classic lines retained all their clarity while allowing Wagner's ecstatic poem to pervade and invade the senses."

Photo: Bill Cooper

George Hall: The Stage, Tuesday 3 October 2006

"Welsh National Opera revives Yannis Kokkos’ 1993 production of Wagner’s transcendent exploration of love and death in a distinguished performance. Kokkos’ self-designed staging is visually highly effective, presenting the opera’s narrative line with exceptional clarity and truth, and the semi-abstract sets have an aptly timeless quality.

This is another show that displays the world-class credentials of the Welsh company. Wagner fans should move heaven and earth to see this outstanding production as it tours over the next few weeks"

Neil Fisher: The Times, October 2006

"Yannis Kokkos’s production is more about suggestive abstraction. At times, the effect is striking — Tristan’s death, on a giant, protruding slab and lit by an eerie green glow, makes for a striking tableau."

Photo: Bill Cooper

More at: Welsh National Opera

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SF Opera: Siegfried - Review Summery.

I love opera reviews, less for what they say about the production and more for what they say about the reviewers - and human perception in general. It would be easy to think that when we go to the opera we all see and hear roughly  the same things - allowing for  aging eyesight,  hearing, tiredness and alcohol consumption of course. But opera reviews (and indeed reviews of any medium) would suggest otherwise - but you know that already. It's for this reason that I very rarely take much notice of them - at least as far as deciding whether to see a particular performance. However,  if there is any "truth" out there and if that truth can be found amongst a number of different people, it will be when all of them find certain commonalities. With that in mind:


Over all, it would be fair to say the reviews have provided high praise overall (not that common with Ring Cycles and Siegfried especially). Common to all was praise for both Donald Runnicles and the  SF Opera Orchestra.

"The glory of the performance was the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, led by Donald Runnicles, who made his debut here 21 years ago with the “Ring.”
Wagner’s music is both big and intricately nuanced. Runnicles covered the extremes and everything between, leading near-perfect orchestral playing. For five hours, the strings were silk-smooth and together, the woodwinds sang freely and the brass impeccable". Janos Gereben - SF Examiner.(JG - SFE)

"...a powerhouse contribution from the pit from former music director Donald Runnicles, whose mastery of Wagner's music remains a thing of wonder and admiration".Joshua  Kosman - SF Gate (JK - SFG)

"Splendors of SFO’s Orchestra. .Runnicles may not be the most rapturous of conductors. Yet when he went for the gold in the final act, and unleashed the orchestra to convey the full glories of Wagner’s mature, post-Tristan und Isolde writing, the results were irresistible" SF Classical Voice - Jason Victor Serinus (SFCV - JVS)

"The orchestra played excellently under Runnicles’ sure and dramatic guidance, Wagner’s music portraying the story and unfolding in as eloquent and enveloping fashion as can be wanted. Altogether it was first class" SF Classical Voice - Robert P Commandy. (SFVC - RPC)

Of Jay Hunter Morris' Siegfried (WNO Tristan in 2012) there was a difference of opinion. Although none of it could be described as being  in anyway in the "negative', "size of voice" was noted. 

"Tenor Jay Hunter Morris, undertaking the title role for the first time, was adequate but never quite electrifying, his singing tender and thoughtful but one or two sizes too small for the task". said SF Gate, but went on to say, "What Morris did accomplish, though, was to inject a welcome note of humanity into a character who can too often seem thuggish and crude". However, SF Classical Voice said: "Morris sang a fine Siegfried, his voice focused and clear, softly burnished and, though not the strongest or most penetrating in the Heldentenor business, still consistently musical, expressive, and spirited".  This was repeated by the SF Examiner: "In the title role, Jay Hunter Morris has the best qualities of a heldentenor, with a forward sound, edge and natural high notes. He had a good day, in spite of what was lacking: a voice big enough to be both heroic and able to cut through the orchestra at all time".  It should be noted that with regards to comments about Morris shear vocal power, the SFCV reminded us that he is a very late replacement for Ian Storey and sang through the role in rehearsal for the first time only 1 week ago! As SFVC says, "Yet his youthful physical buoyancy, near-heroic posture, and convincing naivete amid brutality (how American!) were a delight. Perhaps by the time he essays the role a second time on June 17, in the first of SFO’s three complete traversals of the Ring, he will have found the means to forge his sword with the power of a hero."

There was similar  praise, concerns,and disagreement (do these people attend the same performances?) - about Mark Delavan's Wotan: SFCV - JVC (Yes, SFCV sent two reviewers!) "While Delavan continues to display a winning gravitas, his power came more from emotional depth than sheer decibels". On the other hand SFCV's other reviewer found the opposite: "Delavan’s bass-baritone seems richer, darker, and larger than ever, and he sang commandingly, delivering a strong, dominating performance. He is also physically bigger, with his commodious outer coat heightening the impression. SF Gate found: Mark Delavan, who after a commanding "Walküre" Wotan seemed vocally hazy and physically ill-at-ease as The Wanderer (Wotan's undercover identity). Even for a moribund god, this was a less than authoritative showing" And yet The Examiner said that while  Delavan’s Wotan seemed: "... vocally restrained, but his musicality and superb diction came through again. His duet with Gordon Hawkins’ Alberich provided a rare baritone summit".

Far different was the unanimous praise for David Cangelosi's Mime (central to Siegfried in my opinion and a good or bad Mime really can make or break a performance. Get this right in the first act and your "in" get it wrong and it takes a long time to recover.):

"David Cangelosi, as the malevolent Mime, to dominate the first half of the opera, which he did with a dark, fluid and vividly imagined performance" - SF Gate.

"...the sensational Mime of tenor David Cangelosi..." SFCV

"David Cangelosi’s bright, penetrating tenor projected the highly characterized singing of the Mime part well. Playing the troll, he compensates for his height by crouching and bending, and tumbled and hopped about acrobatically." SFVC

And what of  Francesca Zambello's production? You have seen Ring productions? You know, including yoursel, that people never agree what is a "good" staging/"concept" - right? Well, that would make this Ring no different to the rest:

SF Gate, helpfully fills us in with some background - should we not have noticed during the first two parts of the Ring staged: "The overarching theme in director Francesca Zambello's conception is American history seen through an ecological lens; this is a "Ring," to put it too simply, about the management and mismanagement of natural resources." ""Siegfried" arrives in a contemporary world of oil refineries, scrap metal and natural despoliation - a combination of the worst of New Jersey and East Texas. Projected images during the Act 1 prelude set the scene with gently roiling clouds that morph into toxic fumes". SFCV , tells us a little more - and lets us know what they thought about it: "On Michael Yeargan’s opening set, Siegfried and Mime’s home looks like the post-holocaust ruins of a trailer park, while Jan Hartley and S. Katy Tucker’s projections during the orchestral interludes are choked with the refuse of humankind’s destruction of the natural world. If Zambello’s vision is so stark as to make Wagner’s apocalyptic Twilight of the Gods (Götterdämmerung) seem like an afterthought, the overwhelming impact of Wagner’s music nevertheless makes us eager to return for more." The SF Examiner found the whole thing just a little "tiring" but at least not "Eurotrash" : "Zambello’s “decaying American landscape” and “world ravaged by greed and neglect” — on Michael Yeargan’s sets with piles of garbage, polluted water and smoke-belching chimneys — is OK, given that the production remains focused on the music. The staging is not outrageous, compared to some European excesses, but it is tiresome" . Well, there you go. And SFCV's other reviewer? "..the best aspects of Francesca Zambello’s direction that more than compensated for elements of the Modern-Times-in-a-Desolate-America production that stretched to Make a Statement (Zambello’s Achilles’ heel).Zambello’s best work focused on the crucial confrontations in Siegfried, searching out the dynamics of the relationships and interactions, building the final climax to the most powerful of these."

And now to those late appearing female roles in Siegfried.  We have seen variance in a opinion with many aspects of this production but this is not, generally, reflected with it's female performers. Indeed, the SFVC says - in bold and large font: "Thank Goddess for the Women". Of especial note is the gushing praise from all, for Stemme's Brünnhilde. Some examples below. Should you want to find out who-wrote-what, I have included the links to the original reviews at the bottom of this post.

Here at last was the combination of assured, muscular vocalism and focused theatrical vibrancy that Wagner's music dramas require. As the rebellious Valkyrie roused at last from her magical slumber, Stemme unleashed a stream of potent, silvery sound that pierced the orchestral texture without a hint of strain.

Stemme sounded marvelous, being in even better form than when she debuted as Brünnhilde in SFO’s Walkürelast June (while suffering from a sinus infection). Possessing the biggest voice onstage, she easily negotiated her character’s huge range. She also summoned forth multiple colors to make believable her character’s wide range of human emotions. With Flagstad, Nilsson, and Varnay no longer with us, we Wagnerites can rejoice that we have another great Brünnhilde to maintain the tradition. 

Brünnhilde, Nina Stemme, is on par with storied Wagnerian sopranos of the past. Her scheduled role debut Sunday as the “Götterdämmerung” Brünnhilde is an exciting prospect.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/30/DDBL1JNAUF.DTL

http://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/music/2011/05/san-francisco-operas-siegfried-here-ring-not-far-behind

http://www.sfcv.org/reviews/san-francisco-opera/siegfried-a-glorious-prelude-to-collapse

http://www.sfcv.org/reviews/san-francisco-opera/siegfrieds-split-personality

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SF Opera Ring Festival 2011: "What happens if you just fall right over her?" asked Francesca Zambello.

In S.F., Francesca Zambello completes 'Ring'


Siegfried dropped his glass and swaggered toward the couch. Gutrune eyed him knowingly as he moved in and perched above her.

Photo: Liz Hafalia

The director, watching from her rehearsal hall chair, offered a suggestion. "What happens if you just fall right over her?" asked Francesca Zambello.

Ian Storey, who's playing Siegfried in San Francisco Opera's new production of Richard Wagner's "Götterdämmerung," tried the tumble a few times. It didn't feel right to him. He got back on the couch and repositioned himself, looking down the body of Melissa Citro, cast as Gutrune, instead of into her face.

Zambello nodded her approval as Storey ran his hands up onto Citro's knees and thighs. "Legs do it for all of them," the director said. "I like it."

After a few more takes, Zambello asked if everyone was comfortable with what they'd just accomplished before continuing the scene. A pianist churned on through the score. Forty minutes later, the rehearsal hall, one of three in use that afternoon, was reconfigured for a duet from "Siegfried" with Brünnhilde (Nina Stemme) and a younger Siegfried (Jay Hunter Morris) clambering around on some rocks.

Zambello has been doing a lot of these hairpin turns, working 12 hours a day seven days a week to get all four operas of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ready for the company's deluxe Wagner summer season at the War Memorial Opera House. Opening today with the local production premiere of "Siegfried," followed by the premiere of this "Götterdämmerung" on June 5, the season features three complete "Ring" cycles, each one compressed into a single week (June 14-July 3).

A broken ankle, which required a brace, wasn't about to slow the single-minded Zambello down. Brisk and straightforward, she brushed off any concerns about her enormous task. "We've got a battle plan," she said in a dinner-break interview, ignoring a boxed salad. "Once you've got the whole thing in your head, you don't get lost. You focus on what's in front of you."

Known for her ability to balance the sweeping view with telling psychological and emotional details, Zambello is finally about to reveal the full scope of an American-setting "Ring" that's been in the works for a decade. She and San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley first discussed the idea when he was still running the Houston Grand Opera. When financial woes scuttled an American "Ring" in Texas, Zambello found a new home for the idea at the Washington National Opera, which mounted "Das Rheingold" in 2005 and "Die Wälkure" in 2007. But the D.C. company, too, was destined not to see the entire project through.

Now, despite its own financial constraints, it's San Francisco that will realize the full vision of a "Ring" that invokes everything from the California Gold Rush and a gleaming 1930s Manhattan skyline to bleak freeway overpasses and the winged Valkyries as Amelia Earhart-styled aviatrices parachuting in from above.

Local audiences got their first sense of Zambello's American "Ring" when "Das Rheingold" played here in 2008. "Die Wälkure" followed in 2010.

Her "Siegfried," the director said, "comes out of the American spirit of the outsider, whether it's Jack Kerouac or James Dean - the kind of free spirit who knows no boundaries." As for "Götterdämmerung," it will be set in a near future "when the actions of the characters have destroyed the natural order, and we've come to a time of such corruption that cannot be restored except by Brünnhilde's self-sacrifice. I see it as a time where all nature is dead." (more)

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All images Lea Suzuki unless indicated otherwise

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SF Opera Ring Festival 2011: An Over-View

I was looking at the best way to give some overview of San Francisco's Ring Cycle 2011 when I came accross this. It appears that Janos Gereben at the  San Francisco Examiner has done a far better job than I might attempt

"The Ring of the Nibelung," the beloved cycle of Richard Wagner operas, is coming back to San Francisco for the first time since 1999, bringing with it all its splendor and heartbreak.

For almost a century and a half, opera audiences have flocked to any part of the globe where Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” was being produced.

Now, once again, it’s San Francisco’s turn, and some 40,000 visitors from around the Bay Area and world are expected at the War Memorial Opera House between May 29 and July 3. There will be three cycles of the 17-hour colossus (15 hours of music) divided into four operas (Dates and Booking Information here.)  Including individual productions in the past three years leading up to the complete cycles, the cost of the venture is approximately $24 million.

Ticket income will not cover the cost to the opera, which relies on individual and corporate donations, but the financial, public relations and visitor attraction benefits to The City exceed the expense.

“For San Francisco, having the full ‘Ring’ cycle here is like hosting a Super Bowl or World Cup soccer for the arts,” said Kary Schulman, the director of Grants for the Arts. “We gain not just additional hotel stays, restaurant meals and shopping, but, because these are culture-goers, our other arts and visitor attractions are likely to benefit as well.”

The man responsible for the decision to produce “Ring,” opera general director David Gockley, emphasizes the size of the project, but from another angle.

“It is the most monumental piece of music theater ever conceived by the mind of man,” Gockley said. “Every rational force in our society mitigates against it being done. Yet it is done because there is an urge within us to see the truth and the fate of ourselves as humans played out on a vast, multilayered canvas. For anyone in my position, it is the dream of a career in opera to essay this Everest of challenges.”

So large is that challenge that this will be only the sixth time in the company’s 88-year history that “Ring” is presented. Previous years were 1935, 1972, 1985, 1990 and 1999. The first “Ring” came to The City in 1900, when New York’s Metropolitan Opera performed it on tour in the Grand Opera House, long before the War Memorial opened in 1932.

Beyond size, expense, tradition and fame, at the core of the “‘Ring’ experience” is the experience of basic human emotions expressed in unforgettably powerful ways. What makes it all work is as basic as the anguish of a father (Wotan) over the loss of his daughter (Brünnhilde).

This deep human sorrow hits the audience with unsurpassed impact in a combination of gorgeous music and deeply affecting drama.

“My ‘Walküre’ turns out terribly beautiful,” Wagner wrote to Franz Liszt in 1852, and the century and a half that has passed since only confirmed and amplified his judgment.

Francesca Zambello, who’s responsible for the San Francisco production, said Wagner’s vision of the world “demands a setting in which gods, goddesses, creatures, heroes and mere humans are all equally at home. Many set out on journeys that will take them through terrifying landscapes demanding courage, heart, understanding and sacrifice. As they are transformed, so are we who watch, and [we] sense their stories are also ours.”

Those journeys might sound familiar even to opera newbies: From ancient Nordic mythology to Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” to Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, there are recurring stories of the all-powerful ring and what befalls on mortals, and even gods coveting them.

“All of the great themes of the ‘Ring’ — the destruction of nature, the quest for power, corruption, the plight of the powerless — resound through the four operas,” Zambello said.

Unlike traditional staging of the Wagner operas, here “they are not bound to the 19th century’s industrial age, nor to Europe or some leafy Nordic realm of long ago,” Zambello said.

To make this happen, huge forces are coming together. World-famous Wagner specialist Donald Runnicles conducts an orchestra of more than 100. Principal roles are filled by acclaimed singers, and the rest of the cast includes some participants in the Merola Opera Program; veterans of Merola now take on major roles, and there are scores of stagehands, costumers, makeup artists, ushers and others involved.

For the months leading up to the big event in June, local arts organizations collaborate in presenting a wide range of programs centering on the “Ring.”

Zambello said in his (sic) production, American history, mythology, iconography, landscape and “dreams all filtered into our palette as we constructed our stage world.”

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TENOR JAY HUNTER MORRIS – Replaces Ian Storey as “Siegfried” at SF Opera

 Jung's theory of synchronicity has always seemed so much hokum but given our last post below,  one has to wonder.
 

David Gockley, General Director of San Francisco Opera, has announced a casting change in the Company’s upcoming presentation of Richard Wagner’s DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN (The Ring of the Nibelung). American tenor Jay Hunter Morris will now sing the title role of “Siegfried” replacing acclaimed Wagernian tenor Ian Storey, who was originally announced to sing the role in both Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, the third and fourth operas of the composer’s epic four-opera cycle. Mr. Storey will only sing in Götterdämmerung, a performance that will mark both his Company and role debuts.

The premiere of Siegfried is slated for Sunday, May 29th followed by the premiere of Götterdämmerung a week later on Sunday, June 5th.  Three complete cycles of the Ring will be presented at the War Memorial Opera House from June 14th to July 3rd, 2011.

“Over recent months, Ian Storey was dealing with an illness which greatly interrupted his learning period for the role of Siegfried. When he arrived in San Francisco, he realized he could not catch up with both operas, choosing instead to focus his attention on the role of Siegfried in Götterdämmerung. We are fortunate that we had a very capable cover for the role in the person of Jay Hunter Morris, a talented artist who knows the role of Siegfried very well. It was a unanimous and enthusiastic choice to put Jay Hunter Morris into the title role of Siegfried,” said San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley.

“With great reluctance, I am going to have to withdraw from San Francisco Opera’s Siegfried and instead concentrate on my performance and role debut in Götterdämmerung. I’m greatly saddened that I can’t sing both and have had to make this decision, but I need to do the best thing for me and for San Francisco Opera,” said Mr. Storey.

Jay Hunter Morris, Tenor
 
More: The San Francisco Sentinel

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