The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Category: Das Rheingold
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* Notes * Los Angeles Opera's first Ring cycle began with Das Rheingold last night. James Conlon had the orchestra sounding cohesive and supportive, though the musicians and singers were not always perfectly together. There were a few sour notes from the brass, but for the most part the playing was not bad. The voices of…
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* Notes * The third and last Ring cycle of this year's Bayreuther Festspiele began with Das Rheingold last night. Under Christian Thielemann, the orchestra sounded splendid: the string were brilliant, the harps lovely, and the horns clear. For the most part, the singers could not match this fullness of sound. The voices of Christiane Kohl…
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* Notes * The second cycle of the Met’s Der Ring des Nibelungen began yesterday night. The orchestra sounded very clean and restrained under James Levine. The tempi were often rather slow. All of the singing was solid, though not terribly exciting. As Wotan, Albert Dohmen did well, though his voice was a bit thin at…
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Composer Conrad Susa gave an amusing talk entitled "In Wagner’s Musical Forge: Das Rheingold" on Saturday afternoon. The focus was very much on the music itself, as evidenced by the beginning of the score taped to the wall. Susa played recordings of Bach's F Major Toccata and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major,…
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* Notes * The last performance of Das Rheingold at San Francisco Opera this summer was yesterday. The orchestra sounded better, the brass section was clearly more in tune. The Rheinmaidens sounded even prettier last night than they had earlier in the run. Tamara Wapinsky (Freia) still had a few high notes that wavered so…
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This event occurred in the Opera Cafe after the performance on Sunday. The cheese disappeared quite rapidly and they ran out of plates, but otherwise there was plenty of fruit to be had. Donald Runnicles asked questions to the cast as they all stood around outside of the women's restroom. The best part was when…
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The Wagner Society of Northern California held a Das Rheingold symposium on June 14, 2008, which was declared Wagner Society of Northern California Day at San Francisco Opera. The first talk, entitled "From Iceland to Valhalla: What do the medieval Icelandic sources of Das Rheingold really say?," was from Dr. John Lindow of UC Berkeley. His…
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* Notes * Francesca Zambello's American-inspired Das Rheingold opened last night at San Francisco Opera. The video projections, the work of Jan Hartley, varied from completely campy to tastefully elegant. The first projections did have me in stitches though, and not in a good way. They looked like the opening credits to the Star Wars…
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Kip Cranna moderated a panel discussion on Das Rheingold yesterday evening at Herbst Theatre. The panelists included conductor Donald Runnicles, baritone Mark Delavan (Wotan), baritone Richard Paul Fink (Alberich), mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore (Fricka), and associate director Christian Räth. There was a fair amount of good natured teasing between the singers and conductor. Everyone was quite…
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