West Wall: The Siegfried Line in World War II (Spellmount Siegfried Line)
Operatic Vengeance (Free subscription) | 10/11/2009
About ten years ago, after my first exposure to Wagner's work, I was complaining about the info-dumpiness of Kundry's role in Parsifal to one of my professors at the time, who is a great opera lover (and Wagnerian). He listened to me rant and then said, "You can't apply Fiction Workshop 101 rules to opera," and then went on to explain how Kundry's character is revealed as she tells the story...
DCist (Free subscription) | 09/11/2009
Conductor Philippe Auguin In 2006, when Washington National Opera opened its American Ring Cycle, few could have imagined that it would end as it did on Saturday night, with a concert performance of Götterdämmerung . After very promising productions of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in 2006 and 2007, financial considerations delayed the staging of Siegfried by one season, to last spring,...
Some landscapes (Free subscription) | 08/11/2009
Slavko Vorkapich's contribution to cinema has been described by Philip Kemp in a Film Reference article : 'to today's audiences, brought up on high-speed editing and slick narrative elisions, the pace of classic 1930s Hollywood cinema can sometimes seem ponderous. Events are too explained, too pacedout—except when, about mid-way through certain films, the action abruptly slips into a montage...
Opera Today (Free subscription) | 25/10/2009
Saturday October 17th found the Los Angeles Dodgers out of town for the weekend, but traffic still clogged the freeways leading to their stadium.
Culture Chat (Free subscription) | 23/10/2009
My week of classical music (Wagner's Siegfried at the Hamburg State Opera on Sunday, La Traviata at the Empire) came to a close last night in the company of one Welshman, a piano and a crowd of 1,600 at the...
a fool in the forest (Free subscription) | 20/10/2009
As with Harry Potter books, so with the Ring cycle of Richard Wagner: as the story unfolds, each part goes on far longer than the part that preceded it. The Nibelung's Ring Episode III: A New Hope -- better known...
Opera Today (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
It’s three down and one to go in the first-ever staging of Richard Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen at Los Angeles Opera. Following the premiere of Siegfried, the third installment of this epic work of music theater, it’s clear that director/designer Achim Freyer is a hands-down winner.
Opera Today (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Will the 22nd century still see the opera-loving world as fascinated by the ongoing saga of the Wagner family as the 20th did and the 21st does?
New York Times (Free subscription) | 08/10/2009
At the performance of “Siegfried” on Wednesday, conducted by James Conlon, the qualities in the production that have both captivated and exasperated Wagner buffs were on display.
Culture Monster (Free subscription) | 05/10/2009
The title hero of Richard Wagner's "Siegfried" is often described as a Nietzschean Superman, but the singer who plays him is only human. During Sunday's matinee performance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, British tenor John Treleaven twisted his ankle while...
a fool in the forest (Free subscription) | 26/09/2009
Los Angeles Opera's new Achim Freyer production of Wagner's Siegfried opens this afternoon. I won't be seeing it until the closing performance of this run, on October 17, but favorable reports (and rumors of an amusing toy dragon) have already...
The Arts Blog (Free subscription) | 22/09/2009
The third installment of Richard Wagner’s “Ring” cycle opens at Los Angeles Opera this weekend. We have some early photos of director/designer/painter Achim Freyer’s vision of “Siegfried.” We expected no less. Click on the thumbnails, and then maybe once more, for larger views. photos: monica ritterhaus related links: video of l.a. opera’s ‘die walkure,’...
New York Times (Free subscription) | 19/09/2009
Wagner’s “Ring,” a towering blend of music and myth, continues to send a certain breed of operagoer in quest of the next performance.
David Pryce-Jones (Free subscription) | 14/09/2009
George Weidenfeld has just celebrated his ninetieth birthday. It is a pretty fine thing to be that age, and still partying at two in the morning among four hundred guests. We were some 20 miles outside Geneva deep in the Swiss countryside. The host of this occasion, Norman Foster, the eminent architect, lives out there but his house was deemed too small and for this occasion he had designed and built...
The Rehearsal Studio (Free subscription) | 06/09/2009
I just finished reading Cindy Warner's reflection on her first full Ring experience in Seattle, which she released with the subtitle "Women and warriors need heroes and protection from cowards." By way of disclaimer, I should state that I have been maintaining a running correspondence with Cindy about Richard Wagner and his whole Ring des Nibelungen project, which began a couple of weeks...
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