Wagner in the Swiss Alps

A potentially great concert in Verbier will be live broadcast on medici.tv today, Saturday July 30, starting from 7 p.m. (cet). In the first part Valery Gergiev will conduct the Verbier Festival Orchestra in a performance of Métabole pour orchestre by Henri Dutilleux. They will be then joined by the phenomenal Denis Matsuev to play Burlesque for piano and orchestra by Richard Strauss. In the second part we may enjoy the first act of Die Walküre with the real Dutch deal singing the roles of Sieglinde and Siegmund [Eva-Maria Westbroek and Frank van Aken] together with Matti Salminen as Hunding.

Here is your link.

Medici.tv make a fantastic job by providing many live broadcast concerts and make them available for free viewing to the audience worldwide. If you can afford to subscribe for a month or more to see concerts/operas/documentaries of your choice from their rich archive, please do! It would help them to keep doing what they do. 

OK, not to make this entry too dry, here is a good quote by R.Wagner

Three different types of people take interest in me, if I am correct: those who know my music (and they are rare), those who do not know it but love it and those who hate without knowing it.

Salzburg 2010: Une Elektra électrisante

Look how the city of Salzburg was getting ready for the premiere! One of many banners all over the city...

Elektra, August 8 2010, Grosses Festspielhaus, Salzburg

Daniele Gatti ..... Conductor
Nikolaus Lehnhoff ..... Stage Director


Waltraud Meier ..... Klytämnestra
Iréne Theorin ..... Elektra
Eva-Maria Westbroek ..... Chrysothemis
Robert Gambill ..... Aegisth
René Pape .....Orest
Oliver Zwarg ..... Orest's Tutor


Vienna Philharmonic
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus

Salzburg 2010: Elektra approaching fast...

The main event of this year's Salzburg Festival is supposed to be the new production of Elektra,  directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff and with our fave Daniele Gatti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.  I guess I'm not too much enthused as the show will take place at the Grosses Festspielhaus, which will certainly dilute the impact of the music. To that add Lehnhoff, who's not exactly what I like the most in opera, although I appreciated his Lohengrin, Parsifal, Tannhauser, and even Tristan. All of these productions were important as they went a step beyond the conventional reading but the substance was somehow missing... Also important is the fact that Lehnhoff is appreciated by traditionalists so his productions prepared them to stomach more creative works such as those by Herheim, Warlikowski, Bieito, Kusej, and even those by Guth, or Carsen...

Theorin and Westbroek as Elektra and Chrysothemis [photo ©Baus]

The cast is the most appealing element of this Elektra: Waltraud Meier (Klytämnestra), Iréne Theorin (Elektra),  Eva-Maria Westbroek (Chrysothemis), Robert Gambill (Aegisth), René Pape (Orest). 

Good news is that there will be a radio broadcast of the show scheduled for August 21 at 19:30 (cet) on this link.
Ed:  I don't know whether or not Norma with Joyce DiDonato as Adalgisa will be broadcast from Salzburg. If I find out anything in Salzburg I'll post it here.

I realize many people around me often misunderstand the directors' intentions in various productions of Elektra, and it's usually because they are not familiar with the background story of Electra and her fatherS. I hope you won't find this post too patronizing (please don't!), but rather helpful (?) 

10 minutes of Westbroek and you're cool

Of course something just HAD TO stand on the way for me to go to Amsterdam to see  Les Troyens with  Eva-Maria Westbroek,  the event I've been waiting for since more than a year ago. Just as I thought to go, I learned this morning at work that my presence was indispensable... and that I had to stay.
Not only it's a waste of money for me [I've already paid for the train and had the ticket for Les Troyens], but I really wanted to see this opera live.

Eva-Maria Westbroek as Sieglinde in the Stéphane Braunschweig's production of Die Walkuere in Aix, 2007

There is no any recording of Eva-Maria singing Cassandre, but whatever she sings it's regularly overwhelming, dramatic and stunningly beautiful. Here I picked my three fave Westbroek roles to share.
Whichever you choose it will be 10 minutes of bonding with either Wagner, Shostakovich or R.Strauss. Enjoy

And I gotta dash back to work...