Category Archive: Opera
Vale Jeffrey Tate
Sir Jeffrey Tate (28 April 1943 to 2 June 2017) will be greatly missed. He died of a heart attack in Italy, after a lifetime dedicated to great music. Initially mentored by the ‘Screaming Skull’ (Georg Solti), he overcame profound disabilities to become one of the great modern conductors, appearing at Covent Garden and the New York Met, among others. He was principal conductor at Covent Garden, English Chamber Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, San Carlo Theatre in Naples, and the Hamburg and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras. It was whilst he was in Adelaide that he conducted the first Australian Ring Cycle (1998) and he recently returned…
Continue Reading →Parsifal
At the Met (2013) (DVD 2014) “Laughter, cries of fury and howls of anguish rang out intertwined and tangled, blood flowed everywhere, nails dug bloodily into fat flesh. With a feeling of sorrow and depression Klingsor awoke for a few minutes. His eyes, wide open, stared at the bright gap in the wall. The faces of the embattled women still lingered, and he recognized and named many of them…in a hoarse voice, still caught up in the dream, he said: “Children, stop it! You’re lying you know, you’re deceiving me, you know; it’s not each other you should be tearing…
Continue Reading →Béla Bartok
Béla Bartok (25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) only wrote one opera (as did Beethoven) but it was a beaut. Bluebeard’s Castle (1918) was based on the grim fairy tale by Perrault about the Duke with skeletons in the cupboard (literally). It’s a timeless theme of wiles, deceit and blood-letting that has attracted our interest as a trope previously. In this operetta however, there’s no bloody chamber but a lot of nasty foreboding, atmospherics created almost solely by Bartok’s spiky music. Instead of being a killer, he’s a collector. His (apparently complicit) former wives have, according to Bluebeard, “gathered all my riches….
Continue Reading →Wagner by Michael Tanner
Science has proved that books on Wagner’s life and works would more than fill the Grand Canyon. It is therefore necessary to be discriminating (in a good way) as to what reading matter on the Maestro you choose to buy, beg, borrow or steal. Michael Tanner is a perceptive opera critic of good standing, an unapologetic Wagnerite, and his little book on the subject of Wagner’s work is a lucid and concise presentation of his views on Wagner’s raison d’être and the dimensions of his achievement. Despite tending to present difficult concepts in convoluted, laborious language (the hallmark of the professional philosopher,…
Continue Reading →Götterdämmerung
There's nothing like wrapping-up a series with a wedding (even if it's a double-wedding from Hell)
(Opera Australia, Melbourne, December 7, 2016) (Dir. Neil Armfield) With Götterdämmerung, Wagner closes his monumental circle, and not in a particularly happy way. Or does he? Why, after their interminable love play concluding Siegfried, does Brünnhilde send her lover off to do good deeds, a la Lucy and Ricky? Why are the Norns just catching-up with the imminent fall of Valhalla, which Wotan and Erda would have told them about already? Why, after drinking a Brangäne-inspired potion that moves him to marry Gutrune and kidnap Brünnhilde for Gunther’s convenience (an infamous act that he compounds by slapping her around and stealing…
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