News from Bayreuth

Rats!

Photos Bayreuther Festspiele GmbH/Enrico Nawrath

First it was rotting rabbits in Parsifal and now it's lab rats in Lohengrin.

Here's an email I received from long-time member Sally Eastwood just back from Bayreuth and presumably wishing she'd stayed home:

Made my third and final trip to Bayreuth last month and was saddened and deeply disappointed that there is not a trace of Wagner there anymore. The whole experience was defiled beyond recognition. Since I have lived so long "out of the loop", perhaps I'm the last to know. I had been forewarned about the Meistersinger, which was the last of the seven operas I attended, but by that time I had been assaulted by so much pornography, ugliness, pointless violence and distracting nonsense that I was numb. I like to think it is ignorance rather than intentional that his own family is trivializing and ridiculing his work. Have the audience and the directors even read the texts? Wagner wanted all the elements of his work (musical, text and visual aspects) to work together for an experience deeper than "entertainment" or "distraction." I was always moved by the beauty which touched the depths of my soul and took me to a deep place of no time/ space. Where I always experienced it as an antidote to the world's insanity, I now saw it as a REFLECTION of the world's insanity. During the few moments when the distracting, pointless busyness ceased and the words and music were allowed to simply speak for them selves, I noticed the audience looking at their watches. Young people now are "wired" differently seeking outer satisfaction and an overabundance of input coming from all sides or else they are "bored." It all depends what one is seeking...depth and stillness or stimulation and "entertainment", an inner experience or an outer one. It is also generational I suppose as I am not "wired" to have my senses bombarded with ugliness, frivolity and chaos, especially when it involves something that has meant so much to me for so long. Enough kvetching already. Suffice it to say that if I want a Ring where technology is used to enhance not detract from the text and which still retains its beauty, depth, meaning and humanity, you'll find me in Seattle rather than Bayreuth.

And in a followup email, Sally remarked about the Lohengrin:

I was in the far-most Loge seat for this where half the stage was blocked from view. I considered myself LUCKY!

Festspielhaus infestation!

The embryonic thing in the eggshell is supposed to be Gottfried. Perhaps this is why Jonas Kaufmann was sick and canceled his last two performances.

Not too hard to figure out who's supposed to be naughty and nice here:

I wonder why the caged rat sings (with apologies to Maya Angelou):

I'd love to hear from others who attended and what they thought. Is there any redemption to be had? Perhaps we should have a caption contest?

Completely off topic

Ok, this has nothing to do with music of any sort, but I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. As someone who currently has a huge watermelon rocking and rolling around the bottom shelf of her fridge, this idea seems like pure genius and that sort of head-slapping "Why has no one come up with this before?"

Space in Japan is always at a premium, so smart farmers have begun creating square watermelon; the melons are grown inside rigid containers. Brilliant!

They, of course, fetch a premium price at 10000 ¥ (about $118), roughly the 4 times the cost of a traditional watermelon, but everything in Japan fetches premium prices.

This article is from 2001, so perhaps the prices have changed since then - the exchange rate certainly has!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1390088.stm

"u" the opera

Klingon opera

Not Wagner, but let's be honest here. The Nordic sagas that we love are cut from the same cloth as all the warrior mythology. And Star Trek has certainly taken its place as a major interpreter of that heroic mythology. So it's sort of a second-cousin-once-removed from Wagner's Ring.

Sure, it's odd, but if I were anywhere near the Netherlands next week, I'd definitely attend, if only for the value of being able to say, "Why yes, I've seen a Klingon opera!". (And while I'm not a Trekkie, these characters are just as alive to Star Trek fans as Wotan, Brünnhilde and Siegfried are to us Wagnerians.).

The next performance of the opera ‘u’ will be:

9, 10, 11 and 12 September 2010
Theater Zeebelt

De Constant Rebecqueplein 20A

The Hague
For reservations email kassa@zeebelt.nl or call +31 (0) 70 3656546

And if you want to know more, there's lots of u and Klingon lore here, including a couple of videos in the Klingon language.

http://www.u-theopera.org/

Thanks to OperaBobb for sending this tidbit in his newsletter.

Review: Lotfi Mansouri's new tell-all book

Whilst perusing Amazon, debating whether to buy Lotfi's new book in print format or wait until it's available for Kindle, I saw Janos Gereben's review of it and asked him if I could put it on Wagner Bytes. He graciously responded with an expanded version, plus his review of the current Berkeley Opera offering, Legend of the Ring. Thanks, Janos!

The World According to Mansouri

By Janos Gereben

Reading "Lotfi Mansouri, an Operatic Journey" is a guilty pleasure.

The former San Francisco Opera general director's straight-from-the-shoulder - if inevitably self-serving - autobiography is published by University Press of New England; it is available from

http://www.amazon.com/Lotfi-Mansouri-Operatic-Journey/dp/1555537065

This 330-page delight of backstage stories from a 60-year-long international career is perhaps disquieting for the genteel reader, made to witness a tell-all orgy, ranging from the discourteously candid to the nakedly retaliatory... some with numerous grains of revelatory truth, others purely of personal resentment.

Hundreds of the past half century's best-known singers, conductors, and administrators are praised-and-demolished or just the latter. It is amazing stuff, even if one feels uneasy to be so positive about it. Yikes! I am beginning to sound like the book.

Examples of Mansouri dishing it out, picked at random:

- Santa Fe Opera founder/director John Crosby had an "unmatched tenure [of 43 years]," was "an incredible fund-raiser," but "his people skills were nowhere near his managing talents... the price he paid for his fear of human contact was the coldness of his conducting."

- Otto Klemperer: "unaware of his health problems [a stroke and a botched brain operation], I just thought he was an abusive boor... His fascination with the opposite sex took precedence over everything else." Klemperer, responding to someone with a Swiss accent: "Would you repeat that in German?"

- Zürich Opera administrator Emil Jucker "had all the integrity of the average viper."

- Kurt Herbert Adler "ran San Francisco Opera like a personal fiefdom, oozing disdain for anyone he considered inferior in judgment or experience, and his list was a long one... tightfisted... could be arrogant, aggressive, rude, and insulting - and this was just on an average day."

Written with Donald Arthur, the book is impressively diverse in its appeal: all about opera, it's a perfectly captivating book for readers oblivious to musical theater - a fascinating read about the struggles of a young man from a dysfunctional family in Iran, his subsequent adventures around the world, and skyrocketing international career.

Apparently stillborn in Tehran, on a sweltering day in 1929, and given up for dead, the baby miraculously revived on a block of ice was named Lotfollah - "kindness of God."

Mansouri's recurring adventures over the years in Iran and in Hollywood are both suspenseful and rib-tickling. In kindergarten, he played the Grand Vizier in a cast with Fatemeh, the future Shah's sister.

Unfortunately, the crown prince himself attended our little performance... and I got so nervous that I wet my pants and started crying onstage. From that moment, I developed a lifelong sympathy for singers' nerves.

In Hollywood, Mansouri played Caruso in the made-for-TV movie "The Day I Met Caruso," and many years later, he was involved with the Pavarotti disaster, "Yes, Giorgio," which, he says, cost $19 million to make and grossed $1 million. He went on to direct the opera scenes in "Moonstruck," with Cher and Nicolas Cage.

Mansouri, who ran opera houses in Geneva and Toronto before, became general director of San Francisco Opera in 1988, just a year before the Loma Prieta earthquake which damaged the War Memorial. "[Administration] dysfunction, strike, recession - and then an earthquake!," he laments.

For the next decade of those trying times, Mansouri held the company together, helped to oversee the $90 million on-time, on-budget, successful reconstruction of the building in the middle of an economic downturn.

And yet, instead of losing audience during almost two years of the company being homeless, Mansouri actually brought in many new and young opera fans with productions such as the "Broadway Boheme" in the Orpheum, and great casts in the Civic Auditorium, transformed for the occasion.

Mansouri engaged Valery Gergiev and the Kirov to San Francisco for their U.S. debut, also signing Christoph von Dohnányi, Peter Schneider, Markus Stenz, Christian Thielemann, Antonio Pappano, Andrew Davis, and Yuri Temirkanov.

During his term, Mansouri commissioned new operas by John Adams, Conrad Susa, Stewart Wallace (whose Harvey Milk, he says, "the cast saved from its second-rate music. I've never even listened to the recording"), André Previn, and Jake Heggie, enhancing San Francisco's reputation for having a leading opera company. On the other hand, Mansouri manages this aside about the Harvey Milk creators:

We met composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie in New York. I found them pretentious, pseudo-intellectual East Coasters and self-satisfied. There was an aura of mirthless superficiality about them.

Then, in 2001, Mansouri was succeeded by Pamela Rosenberg, "who [in Europe] was used to realizing her visions... and then send the bill to the government." During the six-month overlap between them, Mansouri says, "she never talked to me about business. Not once."

By this time, in the transition period to the new general director, Mansouri was "barely on speaking terms with Donald Runnicles," he had named music director of the company a decade before.

At his most Dante-esque, Mansouri reserves the ninth circle of Hell for those two, listing Rosenberg's misdeeds (an appointment resulting from "a search process gone tragically wrong") and, even more, attacking Runnicles in great detail, calling him "the one problem entirely of my own making."

Besides Runnicles' siding with Rosenberg, Mansouri also holds the conductor's behavior ("weirdly insecure") and even work on the podium against him:

When he was on, his performances were very, very good. But when he was off, he was way off. Sometimes he didn't seem familiar with a score, as if he were sight-reading it, even in performance. He also had a habit of letting the orchestra overpower the voices. He cared about some operas, but not about others, which was odd, considering he always had his choice of whatever three operas he wanted each season.

But, beyond personalities and feuds and dishing it out, there is a wealth of material, both fascinating and debatable, in "Lotfi Mansouri, an Operatic Journey."

Janos has covered the SF Bay Area arts scene for many years, as arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and music editor of the San Jose Mercury News. He now covers music, theater, and art for the SF Examiner, and for the past decade has been Music News columnist for San Francisco Classical Voice:

http://www.sfcv.org/

Review: Berkeley Opera's Ringlet

Berkeley (Now West Edge) Opera Conquers Big Miniature Ring

By Janos Gereben

Once upon a time, six long years ago, there was a little opera company in Berkeley tackling a huge project, called the Legend of the Ring, making waves far and wide.

And now, on Saturday, here was a little company again, taking up the same challenge: David Seaman's condensation of Richard Wagner's four-opera, 15-hour Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle into a four-hour evening, including a single intermission.

Photos by Ching Chang

Alberich (Bojan Knezevic) and the Rhine Maidens

The first part combines Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, the second consists of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung.

A point of perspective: Legend's entire running time is shorter than Ring intermissions alone in the Wagner temple of Bayreuth, where the first of the 2010 cycles just concluded on Sunday - a total of six hours.

Legend dispenses with a 100-plus piece orchestra, about the same number of soloists and chorus, and huge sets, settling instead for a cast of eight (eight!) in multiple roles, no chorus, an orchestra of 16, and projected sets. A challenge indeed.

In 2004, it was the Berkeley Opera in the Julia Morgan Theater, packing 'em in and scoring critical success. This time, it's the freshly renamed Berkeley West Edge Opera in its new venue, the El Cerrito Performing Arts Theater, once again filling a hall (twice the size of the Julia Morgan), and scoring even bigger. And not.

The new cast includes astonishing, world-class voices, but the orchestra performance on Saturday had enough intonation problems and badly blown notes to temper enthusiasm.

Seaman's reduction of the orchestra is radical. In the string sections alone, Wagner's 32 violins disappear, Legend has none; instead of 12 violas, there are three (Michi Aceret is the first violist and thus the concertmaster in El Cerrito), two cellos do the work of 12, and two basses substitute for the original eight.

Strings on Saturday did great work, but there were not enough of them to cover up problems in the brass to the same extent that the original gargantuan Wagner orchestra can.

Perhaps there were not enough rehearsals or it was just a "bad night," so upcoming performances - on Aug. 4, 6, and 8 - may still have the best of both worlds, on the stage and in the pit.

Wotan (Richard Paul Fink) and the giants (Bojan Knezevic and Dean Peterson)

The cast is gloriously starry for a small company. Wotan is sung by Richard Paul Fink, a regular in some of the world's big opera houses. His Saturday performance combined a great voice with musical intelligence, and praiseworthy restraint to avoid oversinging in a relatively small theater. The Seaman reduction takes most of the depth away from the character, but Fink still gives a solid portrayal.

Fink also appears as Gunter, another remarkable vocal performance, but here he is handicapped by the director's whim of presenting the character as a shuffling, prissy caricature.

Jay Hunter Morris, as Siegmund, Siegfried, and Froh, gives sterling performances, his bright, clear heldentenor not only holding up well, but actually peaking as time went on.

Marie Plette sings five roles brilliantly, including a wonderful Sieglinde and Gutrune.

Among a number of roles they sing, Bojan Knezovic scores best as Alberich, and Dean Peterson as Hagen. The two are also paired well as the giants Fasolt and Fafner.

Berkeley Opera regular Stephen Rumph, a dynamic singing actor, impressed as Loge (especially) and Mime in a personal-best performance.

Christine Springer's main role is Brünnhilde, Valentina Osinski sings both Flosshilde and Fricka.

Heading both the 2004 Berkeley Opera and the 2010 Edge Opera productions: music director Jonathan Khuner and artistic director Mark Streshinsky.

Khuner, who has had an important role in many "real" Ring productions in San Francisco and New York, exhibits an impressive mastery of the score, which is a smooth aggregation of Wagner's operas, making the omission of lengthy portions and of "big numbers" (bye-bye "Ride of the Valkyries"!) almost imperceptible.

Jay Hunter Morris as Siegmund and Marie Plette as Sieglinde

Streshinsky, whose career has skyrocketed since his early days with Berkeley Opera, had a fascinating stage production back then, and he has improved on it this time.

Gods, dragons, giants, dwarves, heroes and villains perform their cosmic drama in a small box center stage, between two large screens. The "set" consists of two chairs and a desk-like platform - that's it. And it works!

The improvement since the last production: instead of Loge using a trash can to clean up the stage during the finale, this one has the proper world-ending fireworks.

Insisting on a previous misstep, however, Streshinsky still has the Forest Bird use a cell phone to report (silently, but in a grotesquely animated fashion) Siegfried's slaying of the dragon, and then sing her lines into the phone. Mercifully short of EuroTrash, it is just plain silly.

Jeremy Knight's projections are terrific - more modest, abstract, and at a fraction of the cost, just as effective as those in the San Francisco Opera's current production. Lucas Krech's lighting design needs fine-tuning: stripes and blotches of colors on faces and bodies are confusing.

Again, three more chances to see and hear this economy-but-vocally-opulent edition of the Ring.

Siegfried (Morris) about to die at the hand of Hagen (Peterson)

Thanks in abundance to Janos Gereben for sending this excellent review!

For a far more negative review, see Josh Kosman's:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/02/DDVG1ENBN3.DTL

(Frankly, I don't think Josh "gets" this sort of production. He reviewed the WSNC's 1994 Rheingold poorly, without seeming to realize that our objectives were to give a number of young musicians an opportunity to perform in a Wagner opera and add it to their résumés. As I recall, after the costs and receipts were tallied, our grant fund had spent around $3000 on the production - and had given around 70 musicians and stagehands (and most of the orchestra members were students) an experience they wouldn't have otherwise had. C'mon, Josh! When the tickets only cost 20-30 bucks, you should hardly expect the production to be the spectacle of a full-blown SFO one. You come to hear promising talent and see innovation done on-the-cheap, something the SFO could learn from, IMHO.)

Trish "still bitter after all these years" Benedict

(ok, not really bitter, but obviously seriously annoyed)

The Chicago Building Stage Ring

Early this year, The Building Stage, a theater company and performance space located in Chicago’s West Loop, undertook a version of The Ring with a rock band performing "original music by Kevin O'Donnel inspired by Wagner's themes". Its tag line was "not an opera - a play that rocks".

Attendees included Sandra & Larry and member Michael Barna from Milwaukee. They shared their thoughts on the production via email:

Hello:

Finally a few minutes to discuss The Ring. Let me preface my remarks by saying that I'm glad we made the trip to Chicago.

As to the play. Building Space is a great little company, and I admire their courage for taking on such a huge project. Did it work? Yes -- mostly. The problem for both Larry and me was Wotan -- Chris Pomery looked the part, but his voice was wrong. One does not put a young tenor in that role. Plus, Pomery suffers from the American problem of trying to be Shakespearean -- it's just not in the blood, and he confuses drama with volume. It's too bad, but if the core is weak, all the bells and whistels around the edges won't make up for it. Was Götterdämmerung the best segment because Wotan was not in it? Probably not entirely, but his absence helped.

Highlight: The Rhinemaidens and Woodbird(s). Fantastic idea and execution. It also points out -- as did the set in general -- that one can put on a great play (or opera, for that matter) without spending a fortune. I rarely mind stage hands taking over roles in plays unless they are supposed to be invisible and are not. I even got used to the stage hands in the Valencia Parsifal we saw recently on film. Here, however, it was mandatory, and they were integrated nicely -- even splitting the anvil was believable -- well, at least sensible. The use of various levels, doors, and imaginative lighting was very good. Also -- the shadow puppets -- good work. Even Friea as a doll demonstrated the size of Fafner and Fasolt. So simple yet effective.

I also liked the cuts (with one exception). I particularly like the decision to eliminate the Norns at the beginning of Götterdämmerung. It makes more dramatic sense to jump right into Siegfried's leaving Brünnhilde and then compress the scenes at Gibbichland. The one lapse was the confrontation between Wotan and Alberich in Siegfried. I believe this is one of two key moments in the entire work -- the other being Siegmund's interchange with Brünnhilde in Walküre which was, unfortunately, reduced. I spoke with Blake Montgomery during the last break, and he said they had kept the Wotan/Alberich segment in until very recently. Siegfried was running too long, and they needed to cut more out. His cutting decisions were based on leaving out any text that explained what had already happened or was about to happen and lengthy dialog between two characters. Well, OK. But, I argued -- and still believe -- that Wotan as licht-Alberich is essential to the Ring -- just as Brünnhilde's coming to realize that love is more powerful than heroism. Tightening the question scene between Wotan and Mime was no great loss. In fact, eliminating almost anything with Wotan in it, was an improvement -- except with Alberich.

Götterdämmerung was genuinely moving, but then it is the most inherently dramatic of the four operas. As the evening wore on, however, I found myself missing the music. It pointed up just how damn important all those snippets are that signal events, personalities, and emotions. I found myself silently humming the passages between the text. This should not be surprising -- after all, it IS (or WAS) an opera. But, I was surprised by just how much I missed things like that rainbow bridge and the "Heil der Sonne" or the opening chords to each opera.

Montgomery's decision to couch the language in Shakepearean terms was also effective (other than for Wotan). I liked the contrast between the "groundlings'" colloquialism set against the more formalistic language of the gods. One did not need a British accent to pull it off. Nick Vidal was very effective as Siegmund/Siegfried because he FELT and conveyed the characters' emotions. The final part of Walküre even made the music in my head sound right.

So, all in all, a good theatrical experience. It won't take place of the opera, but it wasn't intended to. It was an experiment that, generally, worked. However, it made Larry give up mulling over whether or not to purchase the text-only CD that recently came out (German only). From my perspective, that constitutes a success.

OK -- your turn.

Sandra

Hi Sandra,

I'm glad that your trip to Chicago was enjoyable and you found the production to have some merit. I was a bit concerned after viewing the opening weekend's performance and, like you, applaud the company for attempting quite an undertaking. I fully agree with your review.....it worked mostly.

By the end of the evening, I found myself wondering how this would play with another theatre company with perhaps more experienced actors. While I did enjoy the "freshness" of the cast (I did ask Montgomery if any of the cast had seen a Ring or knew of it.....mostly no on both counts) I found that the actors were a bit too "green". Wotan comes to mind especially. His young age wasn't so much the problem for me, but I didn't think he conveyed the weariness and complication of the action as best as he could. And as you mentioned, his vocal delivery was most distracting. I loved your comment about confusing drama with volume. Wonderful!

I did think that the production was very creative though. Loved the birds, and the Rhinemaidens.....great use of the space and the resources to make them swim/fly! And I rather enjoyed the creation of the giants and eventually the dragon. Pretty good for shadow puppets!

The most embarassing moment for me was the Hagen/Alberich scene in Götterdämmerung. The director had painted himself into a corner by casting the same actor for both of those parts. Unfortunately, the jumping on and off the chair was quite silly and distracted from the drama at that point in the story. Could it have been staged differently? Perhaps. Maybe Hagen sleeping in the chair, dreaming, and using his own taped voice for that of Alberich????? Hmmmmm, maybe in the next staging!

The "rock" band left me a bit cold as well. It did add some atmosphere at times, however, some infusion of blood was needed to combat the quasi-meditative, new age-y sound. I would have liked a little variation in instrumental sound. Most of the time it worked, but like you, I was wanting to hear something more but the end of the evening. (The drum solo went on far too long, in my opinion).

Ultimately, I was glad I went to see it. I had originally thought I might see it a second time, but after the first viewing I decided once was enough. Now, if it showed up at the Goodman, then perhaps that might be another story! Who knows? Maybe some other company may tackle it.

Regards,

Michael

Here's a link to the Building Stage's web page with a video of their interpretation:

http://www.buildingstage.com/blog/?cat=14

"Wagner the Mystic" by John J. Pohanka

From member Tom Arthur in Santa Fe comes a heads up on a book being offered by the DC Wagner Society, penned by one of their board members, John J Pohanka.

From the DC Society's web site:

"The overcoming of all unusual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement." --- William James

In this important new work, John Pohanka presents a innovative survey of the Wagner's aesthetic and philosophical development, within the historical context of mysticism. Articulately written, and comprehensively documented, both from Wagner's own writings, and from an authoritative host of western and eastern philosophers, poets and musicians, Pohanka has given us an invaluable insight into the question: Why does Wagner's music affect us like no other?

Wagner the Mystic is available from the Wagner Society of Washington DC. $19.95.

http://wagner-dc.org/?q=node/50

Cincinnati Meistersinger: Review

Several WCNC members and friends converged in southern Ohio last month for Cincinnati Operas' first-ever Wagner production, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg which was to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Cincinnati Opera.

This gutsy undertaking was to showcase Cincinnati native James Levine in a homecoming performance leading an all-star cast. However, Maestro Levine, who has been plagued with health issues, literally "backed out" in April (he had back surgery for a ruptured disc), as did James Morris, also for impending back surgery. One-by-one, all the principals cancelled. Disaster! The Cinci Opera admin department must have been swilling Maalox and downing Migraine-Strength Excedrin like crazy as they scrambled to find last-minute replacements. Here's Steve Charitan's report on how they pulled it off:

(photos by the author, who points our that the Cincinnati Music Hall (built in 1878) is one of the few places to hear a major 19th century work in a major 19th century setting)

A phoenix rose from the ashes this past week in Cincinnati's Music Hall. Those of us who have been anticipating this gala performance for the past 2 years watched as it began to unravel with Levine's cancellation in April followed by James Morris (Sachs), Hei Kyung Hong (Eva), Thomas Allen (Beckmesser), Richard Margison (Walter) as well as several other key singers. How many of these chronic cancellations were legitimate and how many were of the "dog ate my homework" variety only the beleagured directors of Cincinnati Opera know for sure. In a lecture at Music Hall sponsored by the Wagner Society of Ohio, Opera director Evans Mirageas commented that this casting crisis allowed him to know where every singer in the world capable of performing a role in Meistersinger was on the two Cincinnati performance days.

Aside from James Johnson who had impressed me mightily with his Berlin Sachs this past February, and Mr. Kettleson, a proven Beckmesser, the rest of the replacement cast seemed to take a little of the glitter off the gala. I could not have been more wrong. What this brave company pulled off under very adverse circumstances was one of the most effective and moving Meistersingers I've seen in many years' experience with this piece.

I will start with Mr. Johnson as I think his understanding of Sachs and the mature artistry he brought to the role must have been a rallying point for the diverse talents that had to come together in relatively short order. The voice itself may not be as refulgent as Morris or Weikel in their primes or as plush as Terfel's is now, but his clean, lean column of sound never waivered or lost character throughout a strenuous evening. Both monologues were sung and acted with deep feeling and he could light up the stage with a pure and generous Menschlichkeit. Despite his tall stature and lack of whiskers, he bore a passing resemblance to Wagner himself which added a subtle layer of authority to the cobbler's pronouncements on the interplay of music and poetry. The Saturday night audience roared its approval when he took his curtain call.

Having heard John Horton Murray in the past, I was prepared for an uneven performance as Walter. Act I with its two demanding solos must have been close to his "personal best," the voice strong and rich from top to bottom with a gorgeous legato flow to the music. By the final reiteration of the Prize song in Act 3 the voice grew husky and the pitch began to sag, but based on the majority of his work, indulgence should be given for overall achievement if not for stamina.

Two other "anchors" of the evening were Hans-Joachim Ketelsen as Beckmesser and Norbert Ernst as David. Both were well seasoned in their roles but familiarity never for a moment gave way to routine. Ernst looked the juvenile, but had enough heft in his voice to make you believe he would attain the rank of Meistersinger in his time. Unfortunately John Del Carlo's Kothner was audibly, if not visibly indisposed. Having seen him perform the part with honor in the past it would not be fair to judge him by his efforts in this performance other than to thank him for carrying on and not adding another "cancellation" to the list.

Twyla Robinson was a delightful surprise. My previous hearings of this voice involved inappropriate repertory - the soprano soloist in Verdi's Requiem, and Alice Ford in Falstaff. Despite those mis-steps she was a glorious Eva. The instrument is bright and forward which gives it dramatic thrust and it has a rapid vibrato which tempers those steely qualities with a warming glow. She managed to sound young and girlish while encompassing the intensity of “O Sachs! Mein Freund”. She then went on to deliver a serene and soaring contribution to the quintet. Despite a bulky frame she moved with complete freedom on stage erasing any barrier between singer and character.

John Keenan conducted with great sensitivity to his singers - at no point were the voices lost in the orchestral tide and the horns behaved beautifully - no disturbing "cracks" to take the listener out of the moment. The big choral pieces, augmented by voices from Cincinnati's famed May Festival Chorus proved that a "live" event can produce thrills impossible to capture even with the most sophisticated digital equipment.

Having seen Katarina's Meistersinger in Bayreuth I now approach this work with trepidation wondering if her idea of wheeling in a gurney piled with dirt during Beckmesser's "Prize Song" in Act 3 will catch on. As Beckmesser sings he begins clearing away the dirt and out pops a bald, naked man. There were reams of text in the program book explaining why Katarina finds things like this relevant. Cincinnati's director, Chris Alexander decided to eschew the verbiage and trust Wagner's ability to tell a story on its own terms.

Originally, the production was to be a new one set in Cincinnati's "Over the Rhine" district - a predominantly German neighborhood in the 19th century. Economics forced a cut back and the company ended up buying a traditional Schneider-Seimssen production from Düsseldorf. It was polished up and looked newly minted for the occasion.

The only tragedy here is that this finely honed group of artists had only two opportunities to perform together.

-Steve Charitan, Ohio