Staging Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Germany, and especially at Bayreuth, has been a challenge since World War II ended. Its unbridled celebration of German art and culture has been thorny for those who could not see past the “German.” And, increasingly, even the concepts of art and culture, in the Western European sense, have faced headwinds from those who should surely be its staunchest advocates. As a[...]
Parsifal: A Good Friday Play. To perform Parsifal on Easter has been and still is a tradition in many an opera house in Germany. Whereas the Bavarian State Opera in […]
Wagner’s only mature comic opera returned to the Met this season, in a six-performance revival of the Schenk/Schneider-Siemssen gorgeous storybook production, which premiered here in 1993. Pre-pandemic rumors held that […]
A gloomy town center surrounded by orderly but claustrophobic buildings. Violence seething under the surface of respectability. A boy whose mother committed suicide after being abused by a town’s businessman […]
Yuval Sharon, the first American to stage a new production at Bayreuth, has created a Lohengrin that is gorgeous and introspective yet very accessible, at least by Bayreuth standards. Focused […]