So as has become our tradition, here is a look at some of OperaWire’s editorial team’s picks for their personal favorite performances of 2024.

Matt Costello: Act three of “Götterdämmerung” – Tanglewood

It’s always a tricky thing to think about one’s “Performance of the Year.” Especially challenging when there were a great number of remarkable performances – for which, at this end of year – I am certainly thankful.

But for this exercise, I used some helpful criteria. First, was it extraordinary? Obvious one that. Then: were all the elements of the performance at the same or similar wonderful level? And finally, is there something perhaps surprising about it….even unexpected? And with that, it was easy to make a choice. This year, during their always fantastic summer season, Tanglewood and the Boston Symphony Orchestra programmed Act three of Wagner’s tetralogy finale, “Götterdämmerung.” 

Extraordinary? Well, the BSO, under Andris Nelsons, always hits that mark. And the performers, remarkable as well, led by Christine Goerke’s Brünnhilde and Michael Weinius’s Siegfried. But the entire ensemble was simply wonderful. 

And the surprise? That in a summer concert series, people picnicking on the lawn, candles and bubbly often spotted, such a weighty piece was scheduled, and then pulled off. And with such intense drama…despite no sets and mostly minus props, and yet riveting. Totally compelling – and I say this having been to the mecca of Wagner performances, Bayreuth.

Bernardo Gaitan: “Il cappello di paglia di Firenze” – Teatro alla Scala

This is undoubtedly one of the best shows of 2024, showcasing a fresh revitalization of a little-known gem from the operatic repertoire. This hilarious contemporary farce by Nino Rota—a prolific yet often unperformed composer in the operatic realm—shone brightly in an impeccable production that perfectly captured the work’s light and sophisticated essence.

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In 1857, when the Teatro San Carlo in Naples commissioned a new opera from Giuseppe Verdi, he selected a libretto by Antonio Somma, inspired by the real-life assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden. The king was shot in 1792 by political opponents during a masked ball at the Stockholm Opera. Somma added a romantic affair between the king and the wife of his best friend, who eventually joins the conspirators and becomes the king’s assassin. However, the libretto quickly ran into trouble with the censors in Naples, who objected to depicting the murder of a royal figure on stage. The ensuing legal battle between Verdi and the San Carlo Theatre eventually went before a judge, marking one of the most frustrating periods of Verdi’s life. Ultimately, the setting was moved to the English colonies in North America at the end of the 18th century. The king became Riccardo, the governor of Boston, and “Un ballo in maschera” premiered in 1859 in Rome.

An intelligent, enjoyable stage production

Today, it is common to see the “Swedish” version of the opera, which honors Verdi’s original concept. However, director Adele Thomas chose to set the story in America, moving the action to the second half of the 19th century. This shift in time period allowed Thomas to enrich the narrative with several Victorian elements that fit seamlessly into the plot: a fascination with esotericism and magic, a liberal use of drugs (Amelia, Riccardo’s love, repeatedly sniffs a suspicious powder from a small box), and the recent discovery of electricity — a recurring gag where the lights flicker whenever disaster is imminent.

The staging, designed by Hannah Clark, features a revolving round pavilion that serves multiple purposes: it becomes an operating theater for Riccardo’s autopsy during the overture, the Senate hall at the start of the first act, and the tent of the fortune-teller/medium Ulrica in the second scene of the first act. In the second act, Amelia is meant to visit the “gallows place,” the cemetery where executed criminals are buried, at midnight. Here, the director’s concept was less successful: the scene takes place outside the pavilion’s back wall, and the horror of the location is represented by scantily clad prostitutes, drunken clients, and ghostly apparitions. In the final act, the pavilion openes up to transform into a spinning carousel for a lively masked ball, complete with can-can dancers.

One of the key features of this opera is its blend of tragic and comic elements. Verdi skillfully gives equal weight to both, transitioning seamlessly between them without diminishing the emotional impact. This approach makes the tragedy even more poignant, as it sometimes unfolds within moments of comedy. Director Thomas embraced this dynamic, carefully shaping the comedic scenes with a sense of youthful enthusiasm that was both effective and free of vulgarity.

Some problems in the musical production

Gianandrea Noseda conducted the Philharmonia Zürich in a nuanced interpretation of the score. The lively sections were brilliantly executed, full of energy and drive, while the slower passages were often too indulgent, with tempi that felt overly slow. The singers appeared to be “champing at the bit,” eager for a faster tempo that would have better supported their performances. The balance was occasionally off, with the orchestra sometimes overpowering the singers on stage. However, the overall sound from the orchestra was rich and beautiful, with elegant solos from various instruments.

Riccardo was portrayed by Charles Castronovo, whose tenor, while perhaps a bit too dark for the role, sometimes lacked the flow and elegance, especially in the beginning. However, his performance improved as the evening went on, and he ultimately delivered a convincing Riccardo. His high notes were full of squillo, and his stage presence was well-suited to the character. The love duet in the second act, with Erika Grimaldi as Amelia, was particularly successful. Castronovo conveyed all the passion and intensity of a man in love, with beautiful phrasing and his voice always supported by the breath.

An excellent debut and other great performances

Soprano Erika Grimaldi made her debut as Amelia, and she passed with flying colors. Her voice was warm and powerful, with round, beautiful high notes—though there were a few moments where they became slightly shrill, possibly due to opening night nerves. The demanding recitative and aria at the end of Act One, “Ecco l’orrido campo/Ma dall’arido stelo divulsa,” would challenge any soprano, but Grimaldi approached it with confidence and strength. She demonstrated excellent breath control, beautiful legato, and strong, commanding high notes. In her second aria, “Morrò, ma prima in grazia,” she navigated Maestro Noseda’s extremely slow tempo with ease, her breath supporting her beautifully. While her voice may not have been entirely “Verdian” and her pronunciation occasionally lacked clarity, her interpretation of Amelia was undeniably successful.

Renato, Amelia’s husband and Riccardo’s friend and confidant, was portrayed by George Petean, a quintessential Verdian baritone renowned for his expertise in this role. As expected, his performance was thoroughly enjoyable. Petean’s velvety baritone showcased a beautiful legato, underpinned by exceptional breath control and thrilling high notes. However, his intonation occasionally turned slightly sharp, perhaps due to the excitement of the premiere. The aria “Eri tu” in the second act, where Renato conveys his anger over his friend’s betrayal and reminisces about his early love for Amelia, is arguably Verdi’s most exquisite baritone aria. Petean delivered it with great skill, capturing the passion, jealousy, deep sorrow, and thirst for revenge that define the piece. His performance earned the evening’s most thunderous and well-deserved applause.

The character of Oscar, a lively young page boy sung by a coloratura soprano, is a rarity in Verdi’s repertoire, as he didn’t like cross-sex roles. Oscar embodies Riccardo’s playful, mischievous side as both his “partner in crime” and loyal supporter. Katharina Konradi brought the character to life with zest, her brilliant soprano effortlessly handling the high notes. Her coloratura singing was swift and precise, and her interpretation radiated vivacity and charm.

In the second part of the first act, the entire court, in disguise, visits the tent of Ulrica, the fortune teller whom a prejudiced judge seeks to ban from the colony. Ulrica was portrayed by Agnieszka Rehlis, whose rich, bronzed mezzo-soprano was a true delight. Her voice displayed remarkable uniformity across its entire range, with high notes as well-placed as the deepest ones, complemented by excellent legato and phrasing. The scene, styled as a typical Victorian séance, featured upper-class ladies poised to faint at any hint of the supernatural. Despite her petite stature, Rehlis commanded the stage as a charismatic medium with a striking presence.

Among the other cast members, Brent Michael Smith and Stanislav Vorobyov deserve special mention for their portrayal of Riccardo’s main conspirators, Samuel and Tom. Smith’s voice was deep and resonant, while Vorobyov’s was elegant and precise, yet capable of delivering all the thunderous low notes the role demands. Both performers were equally effective in the tragic moments, such as the plotting of the murder, and the comedic scenes, including the “laughing” ensemble in the cemetery.

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Composed for the annual Rosary Sunday celebrations established by Pope Gregory XIII to commemorate the Holy League’s 1571 victory over the Ottomans at Lepanto, Vinci’s Oratorio per la Madonna del Rosario stands as a rare surviving example of the composer’s sacred music. Its narrative, reflecting the Eurocentric worldview of its time, portrays a moral dichotomy where Christianity triumphs over opposing forces. The story follows Alba, a Christian woman captured during a Moorish raid led by Selim, who becomes infatuated with her. Rejected and embittered, Selim threatens her life, but with divine intervention from the Virgin Mary and an angel, Alba is miraculously returned to her homeland, symbolizing the ultimate victory of faith and virtue.

Under the direction of baroque violinist Boris Begelman, Bologna-based ensemble Arsenale Sonoro captivated the audience from the first note of the overture. Vinci’s signature elastic phrasing and ornamentation were rendered with natural ease by the ensemble’s string section. They conveyed a palpable sense of enjoyment and spontaneity throughout, adeptly reflecting the contrasting personalities of the oratorio character. A standout moment occurred at the start of the second half, during the Virgin Mary’s aria. Here, the cello from the basso continuo delivered an unforgettable extended solo, its warm, human-like tone complemented by the gentle sound of flutes and violins. The tonal combination evoked the Virgin’s comforting presence with exquisite sweetness, enveloping the hall like a comforting embrace. After the aria concluded, the audience broke into spontaneous applause, a rare occurrence in the traditionally restrained setting
of religious oratorios. In sharp contrast, Selim’s arias were characterized by the biting and brutal tones of oboes and horns, effectively portraying his unyielding and cruel nature while horns occasionally struggling with intonation.

Soprano Francesca Aspromonte, in the role of Alba, was the undisputed star of the evening. Her clear, penetrating voice balanced softness with elasticity, bringing pastoral elegance to her arias. In the F major aria, she captured Alba’s serenity and innocence, symbolizing the character’s unwavering faith and inner purity even amid despair. Aspromonte’s fluent German interactions with the audience during instrumental tuning pauses, also added a touch of charm and humor to the night.

Standing next to Aspromonte, countertenor Nicolò Balducci, as the angel, took some time to warm up but delivered a compelling performance in the second half. His use of falsetto tones aptly conveyed the divinity of his role.

Meanwhile, baritone Fulvio Bettini as Selim gave a solid but underwhelming performance; his volume often failed to match the orchestra’s intensity, diminishing the dramatic tension in his pivotal scenes.

Sonia Prina, a seasoned Baroque performer, portrayed the Virgin Mary with a voice that lacked the gravitas expected for the role. Her casual stage demeanor and understated recitatives occasionally drew light laughter from the audience, detracting from the sacred gravity of her character.

The audience’s enthusiastic response underscored the success of the concert. Musicians gracefully repeated the final chorus as encore. The warmth of the performance, delivered in the renowned acoustic splendor of the Laeiszhalle and set against Hamburg’s wintry backdrop, brought a radiant touch of Southern Italy to the Hanseatic city.

The revival of Leonardo Vinci’s Oratorio per la Madonna del Rosario was not just another rediscovery but a vibrant addition to Hamburg’s diverse early music scene. This concert, a highlight of the Viva Napoli festival, highlighted the spiritual depth and dramatic richness of Neapolitan Baroque music, brought to life through thoughtful curation and exceptional performances. It offered a rare opportunity to experience the profound interplay of religious devotion and theatrical storytelling that defines Vinci’s art. It brought to mind René Jacobs’ observation in one of his CD liner notes: “Compared to instrumental music, we have done far too little to uncover the high-quality vocal repertoire of the Baroque period.”

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(Credits: Brescia e Amisano)

This may be a Ring Cycle that will not make history, and Wagner’s monumental cycle has only just begun. As proposed by Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, the Prologue evening of “Das  Rheingold” displayed an almost complete lack of interesting, cohesive ideas concerning staging; somewhat complacent conducting; and shaky casting. This should serve as a warning of the perils inherent in much of contemporary operatic productions. Many performances today struggle to survive autocratic stage directors who rely upon an over-abundance of tecno-political interference, all apparently driven by a desire to junk the past in order to satisfy the present. All this, and no apparent proposals for creating valid interpretations of venerated masterpieces, nor the direction of artworks of the future.

This situation, by more than coincidence, recalls Wagner’s own title for his 1849 treatise, “The Artwork of the Future.” This, and other prose pieces penned by the composer, served as a stimulus for the creation of his epic operas to come. In it, the importance of man’s relation to nature is paramount. This is reflected in the opening scene of “Das Rheingold,” where innocent Rhinemaidens have their pastoral existence interrupted by the violent intrusion of “Man,” who violates the natural order in his pursuit of power through greed, while simultaneously renouncing love. As a reformist, Wagner strove to save opera, trying to remove from it the very abuses that have returned to it today. To create an operatic piece of value, be it an original production or the interpretation of a historical one, one must be aware of the piece’s possibilities and avoid the trappings of the superficial.

In order to adequately comment on the Teatro alla Scala production, and view it within the broader context of contemporary operatic interpretations, one should first step back a moment in time. One should reestablish the parameters of the entire “Der Ring des Nibelungen” cycle, which Teatro alla Scala intends to unfold piecemeal: their plan ultimately resulting in two complete  cycles slated for 2026, performed within the span of a week, as was the original intention of Wagner for the 1876 Bayreuth premiere.  

Wagner’s inspiration for his composition was the Prose Edda. This compilation of Scandinavian mythology was a folkloric presentation of culture intended to inspire its people: something attractive to the composer, who aspired to establish a German National Theatre. Thus his ideals for a lyrical encapsulation of German culture were engrained in a poem written more than 500 years before his time. How can one present a Ring Cycle today, where the greatest considerations must be on how to direct a symphonically structured orchestra, while also scenically portraying Wagner’s revolutionary visions through dramatic art? The German musicologist and performer, Stefan Mickisch, dwelt on four aspects inherent to its structure, and upon which one’s interpretation balanced: the mystical-folkloristic; the psychological; the socio-political; and the spiritual-esoteric. Mickisch believed, “That a true production of the Ring has not been staged since Richard Wagner’s time. It seems almost impossible to include all the levels in a single stage production; a realization of this phantasmagoric world is probably only possible in our imagination, be it subjectively different in each of us.”

The difficulties for Teatro alla Scala’s interpretation begins within five minutes of that mythical opening to “Das Rheingold.” This opening is best listened to without the interference of those frequent story-within-a-story pantomimes one often sees staged, where the curtain is raised so that we may be subjected to the self-indulgent messages of a staging attempting to present an aphoristic message that we are supposed to have been previously unaware of. In this opening we have 132 bars, 15 pages of a score totally marked with piano, asking for softness throughout. Softness, that is, until the last eight bars where a crescendo is indicated for all instruments. Here we sense the waters of the Rhine rising up in a tonal surge that seems to wrap us within the Rhinemaiden’s melodies. Wagner asked himself if this music was the “soothing harmony needed for artistic creation.” This simplicity reveals incredible intricacies when we consider Wagner’s own description of the musical portrait depicting the undercurrents of the River Rhine. In his partial autobiography, “My Life,” he tells us, “Sleep did  not come… I sank into a somnambulistic state, in which I had the feeling of being immersed in rapidly  flowing water. Its rushing soon resolved itself for me into the musical sound of the Eb major chord,  resounding in persistent broken chords. I awoke in terror from this trance, feeling as if the waves were  crashing high above my head… Yes, the Prelude to Das Rheingold, inchoate, was then finally revealed. I  saw how it was with me–the vital flood would come from within me, and not from without.” If it is indeed folkloristic, of fairy-tale dimensions, then the Prelude reaches us like a lullaby.

In the theatre, we may therefore attempt to recognize the Prelude as if all were in a dream, wherein the deepest, almost inaudible rumblings would signal the creation of a world, or perhaps an encounter with another unknown realm. This is Man immersed in nature in Wagner’s music, and his “trance” remains a chant. Eight double basses hum, then bassoons imitate them, then eight French horns, shifting rhythm in succession, create a sense of timelessness within the first leitmotif melody of the entire Ring: that of genesis or nature. Our readiness and concentration must be ever-present, or Wagner will trick us and exclude us. Not from what appears to be intricate, complicated, or interminable, but from the hidden harmonies and richness of the tessitura of the rhythmic, symphonic, dramatic characteristics of his musical-theatrical  language. This is pure drama, and Wagner often bowed to the scenic elements that were to be represented through his music. Any musical or dramatic interpretation of a Wagnerian opera that strays too far from these vital essences can only inhibit us from exploring our own experiences of these “emotional signposts,” as Wagner was to rename his leitmotifs. Problematizing Wagner is an arduous and all-too-often underestimated task.

Bringing the Music to Us  

Teatro alla Scala’s administration has stated that the orchestra was working towards a “sound” that would evoke the acoustic characteristics of the orchestra pit of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, known for its pristine purity and the harmony created between singers and musicians. Alexander Soddy’s interpretation of Wagner’s score as linked to the  stage action was wholly satisfying, and the two-and-a-half-hour span reveals care in pacing the dramatic characteristics, sometimes to breathtaking effect. It is also true that Soddy appeared in tune with various modern-day renderings. Avoiding the bombastic, or the accented squabbling among the characters, gods and humans alike, all which would make Wagner’s vocal line and melodies appear harsh and broken, he instead extended sentimentalism. We find here touches of Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, and naturally, von Weber. 

A Prelude, then, with few subtle variations, where all becomes a bit too loud and monotonous. Soddy may have asked the horns of the Rhine motif to ‘push’ or ‘slide into’ some notes. This is contrary to what Wagner asked for while rehearsing his world-premiere: “…arriving to the high G of the horns as played very tenderly, and with sustained softness… and this with each subsequent repetition… as not a mere display of feeling, but true artistic delivery.” Had this been respected today, all would lend itself to a setting for moods, a breath of musical thought bringing us into another reality.

The orchestra of Teatro alla Scala gave the best of themselves, and for many of the usual reasons one must praise their “bravura.” The strings and winds shone above all, but one must also mention the percussionists, and acknowledge the rewarding sounds from the brass. The tonal colors in the “renunciation of love” motif were vivid, dense, and moving when pronounced by the dwarf Alberich, yet poignantly whispered later on as an echo in the scene transformation, chilling in its tragic intention. However, the scene of Erda, the goddess of wisdom, was directed weakly concerning expressiveness, musically monotonous, and her ominous, declamatory message not emphasized enough to move us. Her music should be of the uncanniest sort, complimented by eerie tonal modulations.  

 The Curtain of Guilt  

The questionable staging of Sir David McVicar proposes something that could have hardly ever been effective. The issue lies in the choice of juxtaposing the time and place of the actual setting for the dramatic action. The director also appears to have not found his key concept. He stands beside what he believes to be the unifying truths that define Wagner: Man’s greed and subsequent sense of guilt. However, this is not enough to distinguish an entire opera. In a modern interpretation of any Ring Cycle there must be a basic tenet, an overall declaration, a feeling that exemplifies the raison d’être of the original work while illustrating how its values speak to us today.  

Upon arriving at the theater, one is faced with an image projected upon a stage curtain, the main house curtain being already raised. There is a circle, suggesting a ring, and within it, as if encrusted upon a prehistoric wall, an open palm pressing out towards us. It is at once puzzling, restless, and ominous. Some may have even surmised what it represented: Man’s rapaciousness, that part of the self that would physically commit a crime to satisfy its desires. In knowing Wagner’s opera, we ask if this hand may the instrument used for violating uncontaminated nature. The existence of this inner ‘siparietto’ does flood the orchestral pit with light, taking away much of the mystery and spirituality of the Rhine’s undercurrents. It also allows for two scene changes to take place, changes that were originally intended to be magically staged as transformations in time and place. At other key  moments of the opera, a circle about the hand appears, while not very effective disco-light projections blink in alternating colors, intended to give a deeper, psychological meaning to the presence of this gruesome image.   

The curtain rises, and we have a revolving stage yet to move, with three rather huge open hands,  seemingly in marble, porcelain, or bronze, and upon which are placed the three Rhinemaidens. The backdrop depicts streaks of blue sky, there is some semblance of water, and the ambiance seems to touch upon the poetry and painting of William Blake, whose “Songs of Innocence” addresses the theme of Man and his relation to nature, so evident in all of the Ring Cycle.  

The slimy, jagged bottom of the Rhine, where the joyful, childish Rhinemaidens play until Alberich arrives is far from here. In Wagner’s text and the music, they flitter about as brats teasing an ugly, in-need-of-love, deformed creature, flippantly refusing his advances. All was poorly staged. Alberich had nothing to slip about on, yet still was unable to grasp onto one of them. They neither swam, nor skipped, but just ran around the hands, over and under, in ungracious frolicking. The stage began to revolve. Alberich was standing downstage most of the time, singing to us, leaving the Rhinemaidens to upstage him. The leitmotif of the gold was heard, and a trap door opened centerstage, and beams of the lucent metal filtered through the air. A dancer, masked, clad all in gold, appeared. Not all of us may have understood that he was the symbol of the precious element in its natural form. His gestures were contorted, though swirling. What they represented never went beyond the  obvious, attempting to follow the stage action, and in reaction to the dynamics of the music. But when Alberich ripped off gold’s mask, robbing the gold and renouncing love, the dancer is doomed, anguished, bereft of his naturalness. The gold reappeared at the end of the opera, crawling bloodied towards the haughty, yet perhaps remorseful gods, who were placed immobile upon the staircase leading to Valhalla. The dancer seemed to beg them to return the gold that had been hauled away by Alberich. This sad, melancholic stance by the gods is disappointing as it goes against the music itself, which describes them as pompous, hubristic beings about to enter their exclusive dream palace. Bourgeois possessions may afford power, but this is only a travesty, as Wagner tells us through the demigod of fire, Loge, “They are hastening on to their end, they who now deem themselves strong in their greatness. Ashamed am I to share in their dealings.” The curtain falls upon this puzzling stage tableaux, sustaining the director’s affirmation that guilt is the price we pay for our corruptions.

As the opera progresses, we are let down by one thwarted solution after another. The giants Fafner and Fasolt are truly unimpressive as they are physically presented. They have one-foot metal baskets for lower legs, and Moon Boots attached to these. They have long walking staffs, essential for maintaining balance. There are huge, prosthetic hands attached to their—very visible—human hands. Wired above their heads are bobbing masks representing their characters’ attributes. One has an ugly, unsympathetic face—the evil Fafner—and the other a non-expressive interpretation of sorrow—Fasolt, who will be killed by his brother. The actual fratricide is depicted in a melee of clumsy movements. It is reported that the singing giants learned how to move about on these contraptions for over a month: yet they could not do more than gingerly place step after step, apparently painfully.    

Another idea that did little to create action through the characters’ movements was the addition of four mime-dancers with shaved heads and nude torsos, who flittered about in black skirts almost akin to “whirling dervishes.” They accompany the giants, hold Freia captive, and also accompany the slain giant as he falls to the floor. They also move the pieces of gold being molded in Nibelheim. Two of them will follow Loge about the stage, gliding with him in his mercurial quickness, told though gestures. They also line up behind him, waving their flame-like arms in unison with him and the music, recalling the Indian deities Shiva or his consort, Kali. In essence, they are functional, not magically so, similar to the scene servants of Kabuki theatre. What was sad is that they felt out of place. They fulfilled their duties in a non-Wagnerian manner, taking attention away from the music. Another reference to East Asian theatre was the dragon-snake—Alberich transformed by use of the magic helmet, the Tarnhelm. This was wooden,  skeletal-like, and moved about by the scene servants in a way akin to a Chinese New Year’s Parade. It was not frightening at all, and diminished the great effects of Wagner’s orchestral brass blaring, which amazingly depicts a coiling, threatening reptile.

Scenic Aspirations

In this reviewer’s opinion, the worst aspect of this production was the stage set—not, as many thought, the costumes. It was conceived by Sir David, alongside Hannah Postlethwaite: the latter, perhaps, only executed the designs. This degree of involvement on the part of the director was a major mistake. Only a Zeffirelli, a Pizzi, a Bob Wilson, and maybe few others can successfully pull off this kind of creative autocracy. Aside from the three hands upon the Rhine riverbed, we had only a large stairway, center stage. It appeared to be of stone, rune-like circles carved into its sides. One flight of stairs ended and another flight ran upwards still, yet with no landing to climb to. Many referred to these steps as resembling Escher’s “Relativity,” but one believes this to be stretching the interpretation. Obviously, this was the stairway to Valhalla, which the gods would eventually climb. Yet in this interpretation the gods stand fixed, oddly idle, even doubtful, and perplexed as they looking out to the audience. Yes, their greed has turned to guilt, but this is not Wagner’s textual or musical intention. The costumes of Emma Kingsbury did not find their place within this staging either, but were nonetheless interesting. Though hybrid, they did relate to each other in a surreal way. Some appeared Elizabethan, others as if drawn by Arthur Rackham. The gods all wore masks that, when removed, caused  them all to age in the absence of Freia, the sister of Fricka, Froh, and Donner.  

The worst scene was the depiction of Nibelheim, the underground land of Alberich. Its entrance was a huge skull, center stage, supported by sticks and slanting backwards. It looked like the entrance to an amusement park’s “Gate to Hell” ride, or something out of the original King Kong film. It slides open as a door, then closes a few times all-too-neatly so that the snake can appear, and Alberich can magically  disappear by the power of the Tarnhelm. Gold slabs are poured into its mouth—gold that shall later be fashioned into a skeletal face resembling the Nibelheim gate. Through all this, the one message scenically represented is that of Man’s greed.  

 Individual Weaknesses, Ensemble Strengths

The cast must be considered an unevenly strong one and given due praise simply for singing Wagner. This is especially so for the more difficult roles, which ask a singing actor to declaim dramatic tension for hours on end while weaving through stretches of rhythmical trickery. It is said that Christian Thielemann selected the  singers. We can therefore ask ourselves why some of them were not totally what one expected. Admittedly, these are ‘live’ performances, which are always risky for scores of reasons. Adverse criticism has often been unduly aimed at established singers in live productions that makes no consideration for their established careers, and instead looks only to mishaps on the day.

The family of gods, Wotan (Michael Volle, baritone), Fricka (Okka von der Damerau, mezzo-soprano), and Freia (Olga Bezsmertna, soprano), represent both the internal struggles of a bourgeois family as well as their their botched relationships with everyone else. This includes the other gods, such as Donner (Andrè Schuen, baritone), Froh (Siyabonga Maqundo, tenor), and Loge (Norbert  Ernst, tenor). Then there is difficulty with Erda (Christa Mayer, mezzo-soprano), the Nibelungen tribe of Alberich (Ólafur Sigurdarson, baritone) and Mime (Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, tenor), and the two giants, Fasolt (Jongmin Park, bass) and Fafner (Ain Anger, bass). The gods are also at odds, albeit indirectly, with the Rhinemaidens Woglinde (Andrea Carroll, soprano), Wellgunde (Svetlina Stoyanova, mezzo-soprano), and Flosshilde (Virginie Verrez, mezzo-soprano).  

One should make an assessment here of what they each rendered onstage, and their respective vocal gifts. The Rhinemaidens were fine, vocally and stage-wise. They were all believable as water sprites, though the staging damaged their ability to carry off their requisite playfulness and sauciness. They were neither of the sea, nor the depths, and their gesturing and interactions with the dwarf Alberich were superficial. Donner and Froh had imposing voices, were dignified throughout, yet were often left alone onstage, facing walls, or just wandering about. Loge, the mercurial flame of a shifty god, whisked about the stage cunningly, accompanied unhappily by two voiceless stage servants. These imitated his gestures, becoming flickering flames, though they were scarcely effective. At times Loge’s voice wavered, and the upper register notes broke. The giants placed their voices well, coming off strong at times, though in other moments not so much. They were also truly hampered by the cylinders attached to their Moon Boots: it was as if they were walking upon eggs. More than stone-cutting artisans they appeared as Don Quixotes within a Salvador Dalí landscape. Alberich was totally convincing, carrying the weight of his importance in the action, with an imposing baritone used well and used dramatically. Mime was a bit under tone, but this could have been due to the staging. Erda sang elegantly, giving her warnings to Wotan. She did more acting with her voice as the characterization was limited on the stage. She was depicted as half Chereau Ring and half Papagena. Freia was  excellent, and fit well into the part, her delicacy of movement accentuated her being a victim of the deal  between Wotan and the giants. She sang beautifully and gave depth to her plight. Fricka, too, brought full life to the frustrated wife of Wotan. Her social drives and insecurities, nervous haste, and maneuvers to set up house in Valhalla were believable. There was a touch of royalty also, helped perhaps  by her somewhat Elizabethan dress. And Wotan? The great Michael Volle was imposing, domineering, anguished in this complex role. The voice remains a noble instrument, rich, weighty, yet never excessively seeking over-dramatic quality. We can recognize his experience as a great Lieder singer.

Wagner’s Das Rheingold, A Metaphysical Harbinger  

Where is this Ring Cycle going? Many ask, some skeptically, others hopefully. This is a common question among  Wagnerites. Yet it may not really be necessary to ask if a “Das Rheingold” has taken off  successfully. The concept may be contested, if there is a concept. Some characters of the Prologue will return, thus something of this first evening of the saga must remain. It would be useless to hypothesize, say, if the three hands on the revolving stage will end the cycle, or if Valhalla will burn. Will there be a sword stuck into the World’s Ash Tree, and will there be a tree in “Die Walküre,” and will it be Loge himself who surrounds Brünnhilde’s rock?

In history, there was only one person who ever knew where the Ring Cycle was going after “Das Rheingold,” and it was Wagner. He saw the illusions and abuses of the industrial revolution settling in. He feared the Norns looking into our future in “Götterdämmerung,” spinning the web of time until destiny snapped the golden rope. The tragedy has taken its last turn. What of our future, and the future of this Scala Ring? Maybe the thread of our futures is an expanse of golden knots, a tangle of our impulses and desires.  

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Sergio Mattarella was welcomed by President Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart, at the concert hall of the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing for a Puccinian night. On November 8th, Lü Jia, music director of NCPA, conducted the NCPA Orchestra, chorus and soloists from both China and Italy entertaining the dignitaries by performing opera arias by Puccini including “Nessun dorma” from “Turandot.” On the programme was also a main theme from Marco Polo, the 2010 ballet produced by NCPA.

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Lyric Opera of Chicago’s first season without erstwhile General Director Anthony Freud began as his last concluded: with Verdi. Lyric opened 2024-25 and John Mangum’s tenure far more successfully than last season’s dispiriting staging of “Aida,” with Verdi’s indestructible mid-career masterpiece “Rigoletto.”

On opening nights, Lyric usually mounts either a new production or one new-to-Chicago, but this time they revived Stefano Vizioli’s handsome 2006 staging, refreshed intelligently by Director Mary Birnbaum in her company debut. As much as the libretto will allow, Birnbaum made the opera Gilda-driven, in tandem with the star turn of another Lyric debutante, soprano Mané Galoyan as the heroine.

Given Verdi’s music for Gilda, that centering proves less of an uphill climb than one might first think. Yes, the jester gets the title role, perhaps the finest for a baritone in all Italian opera. But like his operatic Mount Rushmore-mates Mozart and Wagner, Verdi often uses his scores to portray women more winningly than the loutish dimensions of the setting and plot summary may first seem to admit. Alone among the characters, Gilda’s purity of line positions her as the font of truthfulness and integrity, buffeted by choppy, staccato, dishonest actors.

In “Verdi, Opera, Women” (2013), Susan Rutherford encourages us to regard the composer’s sopranos and mezzos not with the second-wave feminist disavowal of the whole misogynistic operatic enterprise familiar from writers like Catherine Clément. Instead she perceives the roles as celebrations of women and elegies to those lost to premature death, such as Verdi’s first wife, Margherita Barezzi. Verdi was composing in a time when female life expectancy barely cleared the early thirties. More than any other relationship he depicted, Verdi wrote father-daughter and surrogate father-daughter dyads with complete love. Enduring reverence for Verdi’s masterwork has often focused on his jester. Though often subject to misreadings as a limited ditz, no less a towering achievement of the theater is the jester’s daughter Gilda.

Fate ch’io sappia la madre mia

Birnbaum’s director’s notes identified the current absence of Gilda’s mother, letters from whom, presumably, Gilda spent the prelude reading after removing them from a box pulled from a trapdoor in the stage. A mute actor representing ‘Mom’ appeared in the doorway as the timpani that close the prelude roared. Letters convey information, identified by Birnbaum as Gilda’s “core need” and expressed in the first act duet with Rigoletto, who puts her off when she asks about her mother and about their family. The mere question so pains Rigoletto that Verdi gives him an arioso within the through-composed, thirteen minute duet, “Deh non parlare al misero.” Gilda does not even know her surname.

The Gilda-centered reading of the opera led to perhaps the only truly controversial decision in the staging: having Gilda enter Sparafucile’s tavern with sword drawn. Birnbaum reports, “For inspiration in staging the bodies within the storm, I looked to Caravaggio, and, possibly more importantly, the great seventeenth century artist Artemisia Gentileschi, a sexual assault victim who took matters into her own storytelling hands both by painting her rapist and calling him out in legal proceedings. I felt that Gilda, even if denied this full agency by her death, deserves her own story, and I have tried to let her tell it.” Birnbaum’s interpretation makes sense. Sparafucile and Maddalena, more than anyone else in opera’s standard rep, seem to issue from Caravaggio’s central casting department. Gilda may not know her way around swordplay, but it is refreshing to watch her not passively submit to a stabbing as she strides through the door.

As for Gentileschi, one of her most famous paintings, “Susannah and the Elders“ (1610) depicts a great teller of truth, Susannah, under the onslaught of the male gaze. A century before Carlisle Floyd’s American masterpiece based on that story, Gilda calmly and directly related that same truth in her second great duet with her father, “Tutte le feste al tempio / Si vendetta.” The censors’ pressure and Verdi and Piave’s discretion leave us without an account of precisely what happens in the Duke’s bedroom—Gilda speaks of the courtiers’ abduction and her desire for the handsome stranger she met at church. Rigoletto then flies into rage over her violated chastity, as his mirror character, Monterone, is hauled to the executioner for contesting a similar violation. Asks Birnbaum, “Is a woman a priceless treasure worth stealing, or a worthless and interchangeable commodity (Questa o quella”)?” In the economy of the Duke, the courtiers, Sparafucile, and—excluding his daughter—Rigoletto, both. But Verdi’s score has the final word. Gilda’s bel canto purity communicates her truthfulness, not her virginity.

Ciel, dammi coraggio!

With a Gilda-centered reading and a Gilda-centered production, you need a fantastic Gilda, and Lyric delivered, with the debut performances of Mané Galoyan. Adorable from her first [vocal] appearance, appearing in a simple brown dress, she gave the right mix of genuinely comforting her father and feeling entrapped by him in their first duet. From their body language, you could tell they’d had the conversation about the family name before. Galoyan probably slots as a full lyric, but her strong technique carried her voice well into the Civic Opera House’s overlarge auditorium. Like Violetta in “La Traviata,” Gilda fachs up a slot mid-opera, and coloraturas struggle with act three. Galoyan gave a preview of how she’d handle the later music when she handled her father’s anxiety about her safety, flowers growing about a grizzled tree trunk.

With generous spin and a quick vibrato, she approached the duet with Javier Camarena’s Duke with repeated instances of an insuppressible float. Marianna Kulikova’s Giovanna, with a motherly character’s mezzo sound, made Galoyan sound even more buoyant by comparison. She and Camarena stood on opposite sides of Rigoletto’s front door until “È il sol dell’anima” began. By the end of the duet, she was crawling on him and gave him a ribbon from her hair. Still feeling her hair where the ribbon wasn’t, she began “Caro nome” with multiple blooms per minute, dictating a letter to herself as she wrote, with a clear, golden timbre like extra virgin olive oil, never testing its smoke point. A delicate pianissimo G# accented “e fin l’ultimo sospir,” and warm chest voice preceded the ascent to “a te volerà.” That last hummingbirdish cadenza before the courtiers set up shop outside the dwelling, on “tuo sarà,” gave the sense of a finger passing through a flame without singeing. The last E♮ finishing “Gualtier Maldè” emerged delicately and weightlessly. Galoyan aced the big test.

Bello e fatale un giovine offriasi al guardo mio

Upon her father’s completion of his impotent tantrum towards the courtiers, Galoyan’s Gilda emerged from the Duke’s quarters looking the complete opposite of dishevelled, as though no assault had there occurred, and her narrative located her trauma in the previous act’s abduction. Her petition to heaven for courage seemed to involve dealing with her father. For much of the duet, they stood a dozen yards apart. Her voice’s insuppressible buoyancy worked like the truth she tells, rising and rising again, her register whole and complete. Igor Golovatenko’s Rigoletto broke his cane over his femur in rage; Galoyan gathered the fragments as she fielded his we-ride-at-dawn energy in “Si vendetta.”

In Act Three, the façade of Rigoletto’s cottage repurposed to form the exterior of Sparafucille’s dive, Galoyan glided atop the quartet and the heavier orchestration of the trio, contrasted firmly by mezzo-soprano Zoie Reams’ crimson-timbred Maddalena. With a warm, attractive sound, Reams received the Duke skeptically, and displayed a nearly maternal concern for him, not an erotic one. Her subsequent protestations to her brother about loving the Duke seemed insincere—she just did not want him dead. Not to be outdone by the five distinct mobile phones that rang in the first act, yet two more spoiled the reprise of “La donna è mobile,” and even more damagingly, two entire minutes leading into “V’ho ingannato” (audience behavior at Lyric deteriorates by the season). Mercifully, Galoyan received a respite from ambient noise, making her sound morendo as her character died, with resplendent spin over Mazzola’s ponderous tempi. She arose from her death sack to cross to the wings with ‘Ghost Mommy,’ who wore slightly comical dorsal angel wings. But in every respect, Galoyan’s performance bolstered as feminist a case as one can make for “Rigoletto.”

Possente amor mi chiama

Tenor Javier Camarena played Gilda’s lousy seducer nonchalantly, with a graceful voice too small for the cavernous auditorium at least, if not the lirico-spinto-adjacent role itself. Galoyan’s superior vocal production made her voice seem bigger in the duet; even lyric debutante, soprano Adia Evans, performed the same feat as Countess Ceprano in their first-act minuet, making the most of her brief appearance. As Rigoletto’s dwelling turntabled away to reveal the court, Camarena’s Duke, already clearly tipsy at the party for “Questa o quella,” offered a pleasant timbre and received a smattering of applause as the orchestra segued to the minuet. His party room featured gargantuan banquet tables fit for the male characters’ prancing atop them, where Sankara Harouna’s Marullo stood making the “tracts of land” gesture to simulate Gilda’s bosom as he related the discovery of Rigoletto’s secret “mistress.” Dominating the visuals and stretching over the banquet hung an oversized replica of Agostino Carracci’s Glaucus and Scylla (1597), one of those myths in which a romantically spurned mortal man gets mixed up with an amorous goddess who’s jealous of the woman who doesn’t want him. Beyond depicting grabby male desire, I couldn’t make it fit “Rigoletto.”

By “È il sol dell’anima,” Camarena had warmed up more, and he blended nicely with Galoyan. But he struggled with the Duke’s legato passages, which Verdi deploys to indicate moments where the character might actually mean something he’s saying, as in “Parmi veder le lagrime.” Thirty six years ago, Richard Leech confided to Beverly Sills on a City Opera telecast of “Rigoletto” that, earlier in his career, he would audition “La donna è mobile” because “‘Parmi’ scared the hell out of me.” Camarena dropped a particular dry E♭ with “ma ne avrò vendetta.” He sat in a big bed to listen to the courtiers serenade him with news of their abduction of Gilda, crawling over a sea of accent pillows. The men’s choristers at Lyric never disappoint, and they backed up Harouna’s sturdy Marullo and tenor Travon Walker’s playful Borsa. Mazzola’s oft-breakneck tempi gave the sense of a wooden horse carousel bobbing up and down as Camarena gave both verses of “Possente amor.”

Though his character came across anhedonically, Camarena navigated “La donna è mobile” better than “Parmi,” but the dry sound returned in the quartet. He resorted to pushing most of the time; your reviewer hasn’t had a chance to hear him sing the role in a more appropriately-sized house, where the role might work better for his voice.

Voi tutti, a me contro

Igor Golovatenko sings everywhere these days, emerging as a real Verdi baritone. Two years ago at Lyric, he might have sounded a smidge light as Rodrigue in “Don Carlo,” but his Rigoletto warranted no such reservations as his voice has further developed in the interim. “Quel vecchio maledivami” sounded like he occupied an amplifying stone chamber. He vocally outclassed Soloman Howard’s Sparafucile in their duet, who sounded a bit hollow and a tad wobbly, though he did stick the low G. Rigoletto’s mirror character, Monterone, featured baritone Andrew Manea, another singer who sounds great in smaller venues but got swallowed a bit by the orchestra and the house. Golovatenko took us on a multi-stop journey in “Pari siamo,” from perplexity, to concern, to rage, ending that section with a gorgeous “pianto,” and then finally to envy of and loathing for the Duke, whose voice he didn’t really mimic with “fach’io rida buffone.” As his skillfully shaped “Pari siamo” approached conclusion, Gilda could be seen fussing with her mother’s letterbox again. Golovatenko still qualifies as a young-ish Rigoletto, and communicated a youthful gentleness towards his daughter, with reasonably Italianate sound. He managed the nearly unstageable blindfold ruse as realistically as one can, and defeated, found Gilda’s “caro nome” letter after her abduction.

The courtiers froze as if in tableau for his monumental scena, “La ra, la, ra…Cortigiani, vil razza.” He played “La ra” more subdued, but snapped after soprano Gemma Nha’s Page cross-examined the courtiers about the Duke’s whereabouts. A fiery “Cortiginai” reached its apex with a ringing high E♭ with “difende l’onor!” He addressed “miei signori” to the courtiers’ backs, arching a beautiful legato line in the final section. Golovatenko’s acting can appear stiff, but his vocalism throughout the performance, especially in “pieta signori,” communicated everything needed. He paced himself well, retaining vocal power for the final scene, as he discovered Sparafucile’s double-cross and bid his dying daughter farewell. Mazzola’s often peppy tempi became ponderous in the finale.

“Rigoletto” still works in the #metoo era; you just have to do the right things with it. Mary Birnbaum’s well-considered refresh of this nearly two-decade old production managed that admirably, and Galoyan and Golovatenko will delight listeners of Verdi at other houses. This remains one of the utterly indispensable operas.

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The 2024 Tokyo International Conducting Competition, organized by Min-On Concert Association, dropped its curtain at the Opera City Concert Hall in Tokyo yesterday.

Thirty-five-year old Greek candidate Kornilios Viktor Michailidis was awarded 1st Prize as well as the Orchestra Award, bagging home 2 million Japanese Yen cash prize.

A graduate of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Kornilios holds a master’s degree in conducting from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He served as assistant conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra during the 2016-17 season and of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France from 2018 to 2020. He has conducted several opera performances at the Teatro Real in Madrid, including productions of The “Magic Flute” and “Nixon in China.”

Riley Holden Court-Wood, 27 years of age, from U.K. finished second and won the Audience Award, taking home 1.1 million Japanese Yen cash prize in total.

As the only female contestant among the four who made it to the final, the 23-year-old Japanese candidate Ayano Yoshizaki finished third and was awarded the much coveted Hideo Saito Award, with a cash prize worth 1 million Japanese Yen combined.

They were judged by a male-dominating panel chaired by Japanese conductor Tadaaki Otaka. Other jurors were Okko Kamu, Rainer Küchl, Hubert Soudant, Ken Takaseki, Jeff Alexander, Tatsuya Shimotsuke, Mike George, Junichi Hirokami.

Founded in 1967 by Tokyo based Min-On Concert Association, the Tokyo International Conducting Competition has proved a decisive career booster to its recent laureates. Nodoka Okisawa, winner of the 2018 edition, went on to win the Grand Prix at the renowned Concours international de jeunes chefs d’orchestre de Besançon in France in 2019. She was appointed assistant conductor to Kirill Petrenko at Berlin Philharmonic, and serves as chief conductor of the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra in Japan.

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Tributes from China poured in as news of the passing of Leif Segerstam reached this corner of the world two days ago.

No stranger to the Chinese orchestras and audience, Segerstam has made a lot of visits to China in the 2000s till just before the Covid pandemic struck in early 2020. He was a frequent guest on the podium of the Shanghai Symphony, Beijing Symphony, Shenzhen Symphony, Zhejiang Symphony, Hangzhou Philharmonic and the NCPA orchestras, conducting a wide range of repertoire, including, sometimes, his own outputs.

Maestro Zhang Yi, Artistic Director of Zhejiang Symphony Orchestra and the China National Ballet Orchestra, invited Segerstam to conduct the Zhejiang Symphony in a performance of Tristan, Rienzi and Tannhäuser overtures, Jean Sibelius Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 307 of Segerstam’s own creation (a world premiere) in October 2017 in Hangzhou. He recalls how they first met:”It was when Segerstam conducted Malmö Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 in Malmö in 2010. He held the audience spellbound, me included. Later I invited him to collaborate with the Zhejiang Symphony by conducting his signature pieces. That concert was an immensely touching and incredible memory.”

Segerstam is equally demanded in the orchestra pit as he is on the podium.The full blooded soundscape and huge dynamic range with which he is famously associated as an opera conductor eventually took him to an unlikely destination: China.

In December 26-27, 2017, the Ministry of Culture of China solicited the artistic leadership of Segerstam by inviting him to conduct a new production of “Mulan” at the Third China Opera Festival hosted by the Jiangsu Centre for the Performing Arts in Nanjing. The triennial festival is regarded as a hall of fame by opera composers, houses, orchestras, conductors, directors and singers in China. The involvement of a foreigner was unthinkable and unprecedented, and Segerstam was the first and only foreign conductor ever engaged by the Festival.

He conducted the two performances of “Mulan”, an opera by Guan Xia based on the Chinese ancient legend of Mulan which was also the source of inspiration for the 1998 Disney animation Mulan. Down in the pit was the St Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra. The title role, created in 2004 by soprano Peng Liyuan or better known as the First Lady or Mrs Xi (yes the wife of the Chinese President is a soprano), was sung by Lei Jia, Peng’s doctoral student.

Tributes to Segerstam poured in by composers and conductors who see him as an enchanting and charismatic being. Mr Guan Xia is saddened by the death of Segerstam :”I was really impressed by his electrifying conducting in the pit of my opera Mulan. The success of that run owed much to him, and to his refined technique on the podium which left the audience an unforgettable and lasting wonderful memory. May he rest in peace.”

Musicians who worked with Segerstam offered their tributes. Micky Wrobleski, American tuba player and Principal Tuba of Suzhou Symphony Orchestra of China, onced played under the baton of Segerstam around 2014. He shares experiences working with him both on and off the stage in Beijing:”On the podium, he tempered every experience with humor and a sense of seriousness that was absolutely palpable. For him, he brought a depth of understanding and knowledge coupled with incredible experience and expertise that most people had never felt in their musical lives. Off the podium, he was generous with his time and advice, he was approachable beyond expectation, and refreshingly honest. His personality alone filled the concert halls he occupied. Rest in peace, dear Maestro.”

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Lise Lindstrom recently took time to converse with Benjamin Torbert for OperaWire. Lindstrom sings all three Brünnhildes in “Die Walküre,” “Siegfried,” and “Götterdämmerung” in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s very lightly staged concert presentation of Wagner’s “Der Ring Des Nibelungen,” on 13-20 October 2024. She already appeared with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for two performances of “Walküre” in May 2024. After the Dallas “Ring Cycle,” she assays die Färberin in Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” at the Metropolitan Opera, beginning 29 November.

OperaWire: So this is interesting because I’m interviewing you about what you’re about to do… one third of which I already got to see in the Spring.

Lise Lindstrom: So there’s not a lot of mystery, is that what you’re trying to tell me?

OW: I don’t about that — she’s mysterious in “Siegfried,” spends ninety percent of the opera sleeping. So you’ve been doing Brünnhilde since 2013. [Has] your approach to her changed or evolved, since you’ve got a decade of Brünnhilde under your belt?

LL: Of course it has. So my first was the “Walküre” Brünnhilde and I did that in a production with Graham Vick in Palermo and Pietari Inkinen conducted that. It was a fantastic group and I was so lucky. I was extremely lucky to have done my first Brünnhilde with Graham because he set the standard. He set the bar for how I could approach such a monster role. I was completely daunted. I was overwhelmed and one hundred percent sure I wasn’t worthy. I mean, I think that for singers… I don’t know if everyone feels this way… I felt like I wasn’t worthy of this material. It’s so legendary, so epic. And I thought, what is a girl from Sonora, California, doing singing Brünnhilde? How does she even deign to enter that arena? Because when you think about it, it’s quite an arena to enter.

Graham heard my insecurities, and he just politely rolled his eyes, and then he walked me through it, and helped me break it down into bite-sized chunks. And it was all about the words. It was like [coaching] a Shakespearean actor. Every day, we met at 9:00 AM for an hour with the pianist before the staging rehearsal started at 10:00 and we just sat with the pianist. We didn’t run the music. We listened to little bits and pieces, we talked about the meanings of the words and why Wagner chose that note progression, that phrasing for those words. What was the question mark about, what was the comma about? And particularly with Wotan, because those conversations are so intense and in Wotan’s monologue in the Second Act she’s a silent partner… She has to be [reacting] to him, and totally in on the words. So eventually, in 2016, when I came up to my first full Cycle, I brought all of [those concepts] of learning, integrating, personalizing with me and it was — really it was — because of Graham.

OW: From the audience, encountering the text again, you’re struck by these great moments, like the way she lawyers Wotan in “War es so schmälich,” and she takes his words, takes his music, breaks it into pieces, and builds it back into something else. It’s so good, every single time you see it…

LL: I agree. And yet, it’s also so honest because she is he and he is she. So she could be perceived as using him against himself. But the truth is, there is very, very little [in which] they are not exactly alike, which is why it’s so heartbreaking, ultimately, from a psychological point of view. The breakup of that relationship, of that entwined-ness, is heartbreaking. On the surface, it’s a father-daughter relationship, but from a philosophical point of view, it’s Wagner grappling with the Other of himself and how not to be dominated by the Other and to find his integrity. And that’s what they both do at the end of that third act.

OW: What do you love about performing Brünnhilde and her trajectory in the three music dramas?

LL: That she has the potential to be the most human character in the entire Cycle. [For] me, as a dramatic soprano, she’s the most human character that I get to portray because she has this extraordinary development from the naiveté and the innocence of youth, teenager-ness, and the idolization of her father. And just [this attitude that says,] “life is really good, come on, let’s go, you know, let’s do it.” And then she’s confronted almost immediately with his frailty, his capitulation in the face of Fricka, and the admittance, on his side, of what a major mess he’s created.

Then she meets Siegmund. And the tectonic shift within her is not conscious. It is visceral. That’s what’s so powerful about the Todesverkündigung, is that it’s a visceral shift. And if we’re clever as actors, on stage, in combination with that language, it’s not about telling the audience that it’s happening. It’s having the audience experience it as she does too. So it’s not the actual Erzälung (narrative) [telling you] “ohh, this is what I’m going through now, folks, so come along with me,” which some of the opera is, [admittedly]. But the Todesverkündigung is that moment where — I can still see Graham’s face — [Siegmund’s] like, “Ohh, what’s happening to me? Oh my God.”

“Ich sehe die Noth / die das Herz dir zernagt / ich fühle des Helden heiligen Harm” (I see the distress / that gnaws at your heart / I feel the hero’s holiest grief). [And then,] “Ich sehe, ich fühle” (I see, I feel) — and she’s like, “Oh my God, what is actually happening, wait, this is way beyond my previously understood skillset. I am actually now on a totally different journey. I have no choice.”

And of course it mirrors exactly where Wotan is. That’s why his monologue is so full of despair and gut-wrenching agony, it’s because he sees it, he feels it, he hears it within himself… Then she becomes the next messenger of that entire journey, which culminates in the unseen. I love that with Brünnhilde the arc is vast, and you have “Die Walküre,” you have this coming of age story with her, her independence. She’s going to be autonomous. She’s going to go out into the world. She’s making her decision. It ends the relationship with Wotan. She doesn’t quite understand that, [or why that’s necessary,] until the end of the of the third act…

Then you have this maiden that wakes up in “Siegfried.” She’s no longer a god, she’s completely bare and she’s with Siegfried. Well, she knew she was gonna be somehow, how that was gonna work out. Or did she? Then the true heartache of “Göttedämmerung,” the euphoria of “Zu neuen Thaten,” the infiltration of her happy place by Waltraute and all of this bad news. The false Gunther, the rape by false Gunther, or whatever happens there. And then the darkness of the Gibichung Hall. Again, it’s a human journey. You know, we’re talking dark night of the soul, and how to recover from all of that. And then the euphoria of delivering the ultimate release for everybody involved in “Starke Scheite.” It’s the coolest thing ever.

OW: So while musically they’re three different roles, dramatically, it’s one big, long episodic role.

LL: One hundred percent.

OW: I’m excited to see you in Atlanta next year, where you perform in a staged “Siegfried.” But to the audience, concert opera looks easier. You don’t have to climb around on anything crazy. You don’t have to remember blocking. Maybe there’s a little semi-staging like you guys are doing in Dallas. Is anything about concert opera actually low-key harder?

LL: Yeah, there is an aspect of it that is low key-harder, because it’s more exposed. There’s nowhere to hide. You know, one of the joys of being a singing actor in a production is you’ve got a set, a costume, a concept. And we’re in our little world up there, we’re creating a scene and then inviting the audience into it. And the concert stage requires a little bit more work to do the same thing, because we have to create the spell, we have to create the environment, the feeling that this thing is percolating around us. So I think it’s also why Maestro Luisi chose people who had time in these roles, who had legacy behind them already, and could bring all of that spell or energy of all of our past experiences with the roles [onto the stage]. Otherwise… it would be really hard to make your Brünnhilde debut doing this concert version. It would just be a totally different thing.

OW: This cast is bananas. It’s incredible how much experience a lot of y’all have. And there are some younger artists in the Valkyrie stable…

LL: …and Deniz Uzun, making her Fricka debut. [It] takes some major cojones to take that on, and she nailed it.

OW: So, about career trajectory, you studied with Blanche Thebom, and part of what’s interesting about you as this specialist in big Wagner, big Strauss, is that you’ve done this in the way that we were led in the twentieth century to believe it ought to go. The voice maturing in the middle of the career and only then assuming those roles. Everybody loves talking about how younger singers are getting pushed into heavy roles too soon. What did you take from Blanche Thebom about this heaviest German repertory?

LL: You know, Blanche was probably not the best teacher to start with. Because she was a technician, but not a technician that a 17-year-old needs. You know, 17-year-olds need to know nuts and bolts like, you put this thing here, and you take that thing off there, and… then you put this other thing over there. Blanche was such an extraordinary artist. And actually, I was just talking about this with a colleague last night. Now her wisdom is front in my head, all the time, so it’s about the journey. It’s about being completely committed to the moment, every moment, and then this moment, and then this moment. What are you creating now? What are you answering now? What are you saying to your colleague now? How is this feeling now? Not how you did it last week, or even yesterday, or even this morning. How are you doing this now? So that kind of wisdom is priceless.

But what was so crucial for me — people didn’t know what to do with my voice, even Blanche. The first aria I ever learned was “Einsam in trüben Tagen from “Lohengrin.” I sang that for two and a half years in her studio and I never got past page three. Because I could never sing it, really. And you know, even now I have, like, PTSD [with] that aria. But she was right. She heard the instrument amidst all of the underdevelopment of the technique. But it took years before everything got in alignment: my mentality about how to sing, my technique, my physicality about how to sing, and then the right repertoire.

The only thing that I did which was topsy turvy [was] I started my career with Turandot, whereas a lot of singers end their careers with Turandot. And everybody that was anybody that I coached that role with before I did my first one, told me it would ruin my voice. And I was like, well, okay, I’m coming from absolute obscurity. If I ruin my voice trying to do something, I guess that’s not such a disaster. The disaster would be not trying to do something. That would be the disaster. And lo and behold, it was the key. So through that role, I found a good teacher at the same time — that was great timing — and the combination of the teacher, the technique from that teacher, and the role really educated my mental, physical, technical self. [It taught me] how to do it.

Then after a couple hundred performances of that I thought, well, I’d really like to sing something else. So let’s try and get some German repertoire and slowly we started building Sentas and Salomes and things like that.

OW: How does your voice still sound so pliant after all those Turandots? I know part of the answer to that is technique…

LL: This is something I feel so strongly about with singers, and I think things are changing now in SingerLandia. Technique is a suggestion, but it’s not a one-way-or the-highway kind of idea. It is a road map. People can lead you to ideas about how your voice works, but at the end of the day we have to have that autonomy one hundred percent, and knowledge of the physicality. What does our body/voice need? I remember my turning point was with Turandot. I remember driving to a rehearsal, my first performance in my first production of “Turandot” and I thought, I don’t know how to sing this. I’m listening to Maria Callas, I’m listening to Birgit Nilsson, I’m listening to Inge Borkh and other recordings, and I’m like, I can’t do it like that. And I just thought, well, then you have to do it your own way. You have to figure out what your own way with this is and if it hurts, I guess that’s bad. So don’t do that.

And I was really smart/lucky. Lucky it never hurt. I could tell that I had a physical limitation, but that was an evolutionary thing that would change as I got older, and it has. I never pushed against that. I was like, well, this is the way it is now. I’m in my thirties. It shouldn’t be any different. Now I’m in my forties. It’s getting richer. It’s getting more pliant. I’m getting more colors. I’m getting more capacity. Cool. None of that is costing me my voice, my technique, my stamina.

Singers have to be so smart. But they also have to be incredibly strong. We’re being coached by lots of different people. We’re getting lots of input from other people about how we should sound, what repertoire we should sing. In the end, the buck stops here. It has to. My chemistry has to fit me. And you just have the have the balls to sing Brünnhilde how you want to sing it yourself. And not try and be anybody else.

And… I think that’s sort of the bottom line. I sing Elektra like I was a lyric soprano. There [are] times that I just blast the wall out and there are times when I’m incredibly lyric. I can do that. Not everybody can do that. But I like doing it. It saves my voice. It makes me have something to do. I like it.

OW: It makes “Elektra” prettier.

LL: It makes Elektra prettier. It makes her more me. It makes her more relatable, which I’m always much more interested in. In the end, I’m an actor who sings. I’m not a singer who acts. I like acting. I like portraying characters. I like sharing an emotional experience with the audience. I want to bring these characters to life, like the composer intended.

OW: We talk about Puccini, and like Turandot, this dramatic German repertory is often portrayed as a cul-de-sac, a destination for a singer, as though once you’re singing it, you can’t do other things. Do you have plans to keep Puccini in the mix? Listening to you as Brünnhilde — you’re from California — one can hear you as Minnie in “La Fanciulla del West.”

LL: I just got the score out! It’s literally on the stairs right behind me because I’m actually gonna program that into my future. I’m just gonna put it in the suitcase and carry it with me because I really, really want to [do it]. I am the girl from the Golden West. I grew up in the gold country. I grew up in a town named Sonora.

OW: “Laggiù nel Soledad.”

LL: Soledad! It’s right over there, [basically neighbors]! I would love to sing that role. Isolde and Minnie are the two things I have yet to do that I would love to do. I’m sure there are other things, I don’t know. “The Makropulos Affair” would probably be great for me. I’ve never done Czech, so it would be a real stretch for me. But easily “La Fanciulla del West,” you nailed it.

OW: When you talk about Elektra and dialing the voice back a bit and singing more lyrically, even though there are also all of those blowout moments: that’s Minnie [too].

LL: Do you have the recording of Eleanor Steber, the live one? Yeah. It’s just so… I mean, actually, it’s gonna make me cry. It’s so beautiful. The orchestra is so cool — Puccini gets such a bad rap. I mean, he is so diminished in so many people’s minds, and yet he is a genius. He was on a trajectory. I wish he hadn’t died when he did, or I wish he had finished “Turandot” sooner. Because the architecture of his composition is completely unique. Leoncavallo didn’t have it. Mascagni didn’t have it. They had their own versions, but at that time he just had his finger on a pulse, on a thread of energy, that I wish [he] had… expanded more, lived in [more].

OW: Let’s talk about Strauss — it’s exciting that you’ll be in New York in November, doing “Die Frau ohne Schatten,” and for my money, you’ve got the best of the three female roles in that opera.

LL: I agree.

OW: What’s your relationship to that opera and how does fit in with all these other roles you’ve done?

LL: “Die Frau ohne Schatten” is such a strange amalgamation of Straussian styles. I mean [my] role in particular: Färberin. She’s sort of a heroic Zerbinetta in a weird way. Those lines in the second act — the singer has to be able to be somewhat gymnastic in singing those lines, and yet have the force of an Elektra. You have to have the ability to get through the orchestra. Again, it’s a great challenge as an actor because it’s very easy to hate Färberin. Because she can be perceived as one-dimensional from the very beginning: but actually there’s an awful lot going on beneath the surface. Otherwise she wouldn’t be with Barak, there wouldn’t be any kind of relationship there, and she wouldn’t be as conflicted.

I did my first one in Hamburg with Linda Watson singing her first Amme and with the absolutely stunning, unforgettable, unparalleled Emily McGee singing the Kaiserin. And it was my first Färberin! And with those two powerhouses on stage, I was scared to death. But again, I just found my way: to do it my way, with my voice, perhaps more of a lyric sound than people [were] expecting, but still with enough power to get through the orchestra.

I remember saying to a very good friend, when I was learning it, how jealous I was of the Kaiserin… She has all this beautiful music, all night long, and the Färberin has to wait for those first three pages of the third act to have the beautiful soaring line. And I don’t feel jealous anymore — I wouldn’t ever want to sing any other role except the Färberin. I don’t imagine I will ever sing Amme. It wouldn’t be in my wheelhouse. Those aren’t my gifts. She’s more zwischy and she’s got to have real balls in the lower part of her register. And I mean, maybe in ten years I’ll have more of that, but my gift is still the top, and that’s why Färberin really suits me.

Now I love it and I love the journey. I’m still puzzled by the story. I still get confused. It’s so Hofmannsthal, it’s so mythological, it’s so fairy-tale. It’s so ‘swimmy’ in that third act, intentionally so. And I know the parallels between [it and] “The Magic Flute” are there. The journeys, the dark, the light, the redemption [arc], all of that, and I get it from that aspect. But as an actor, I just have to give myself completely over to it rather than… with all the other Strauss roles, I know the journey. There’s no prediction here. I’m not pre-programming anything for the audience. They have to take from it what they take. I’m just delivering the information.

OW: How do you pace yourself, singing a few roles that aren’t considered killer roles? How does one recover between Brünnhildes and Turandots?

LL: Well, it’s funny because I was just talking to Max Potter over at Lenny Studio. Max and I work on planning… my digital content on Instagram and Facebook, and I am an incredibly hesitant social media user, but I also am a very enthusiastic communicator. So with her help, we try to develop things that I feel okay about sharing. And she just said to me, “listen, some good ideas are how-to videos, or process videos, or day-in-the-life-of videos.” And I was like, “yeah, yeah, I’m terrible at getting that content up, but there’s probably interest in it and I should do that.” And [she said], “what do you do with your down time? You just disappear off social media during your downtime.” It’s like, well, yeah, because I’ve disappeared. I mean, in my mind, I’m no longer Lise Lindstrom the opera singer. I’m Lise Lindstrom, the girl from Sonora, who’s just trying to figure out what to cook for dinner, or I should really do the laundry today. Downtime is tricky. But what I’ve had to try and do is realize that downtime means that I put all these people that live in me, sort of in a cryogenic chamber, and they’re all just percolating, ready to come awake at any moment. And I feed myself, literally and figuratively, all the things that become resources for when I get to bring them out of their stasis again.

And by feeding myself, I keep my mind active, and when my mind’s not active, that’s the danger zone. That’s usually when I plummet into the depths of despair. “Oh, I’ll never sing again. No one’s ever gonna hire me, maybe it wasn’t all real after all.” You know that’s when all the ghoulies come out of the closet. And it’s all about momentum. So [I am] feeding myself, going for a walk, going to the museum, reading a book, having a conversation, learning a new role, reading some letters between Hofmannsthal and Strauss, or, you know, finally reading that great Wagner book. Because otherwise the momentum goes from light speed to zero, and that difference can be devastating.

I think we all have been conditioned to think that if we’re not at warp speed one hundred percent of the time we’re failing, which is utter BS. Honestly, it’s very American, and it’s so completely misaligned to the biological system that we live within, which actually needs time to digest and recover and resurface. So if we’re going full speed ahead all the time we’re, [first and foremost,] adrenaline junkies, and [also] never in a pose of recovery and rejuvenation.

So the ultimate thing is when you sing a Brünnhilde, after you’re done singing Brünnhilde, you need to put Brünnhilde to bed for a few days or weeks. And really, the best possible thing I know I need is two or three days where I don’t have to really get out of bed. And it may feel like being lazy, it may feel like I’ve dropped out of the human race, but that kind of deep level recovery is mandatory. Because if I don’t go that deep [into] recovery then I cannot resurface and be epic again or what I expect myself to be. So that’s the easy answer. It [is almost never] possible because of scheduling or travel. You know, the cruelest thing an opera singer has to do after an epic performance is get up the next morning, pack their suitcase and get on a plane. I mean, it is brutal and we’re all walking around airports, glassy eyed, and we’re like, how did I get here? Wasn’t I just doing [this]? Yeah, you were. But you still have to figure out where you’re going, how to get there. Rental car, hotel. I mean, it’s brutal to be ripped out of that deeply creative space and then function like a normal human being.

I’ll come back here [to California], change the suitcase, I’ll be here for about four days and then I’m going to fly to London to work with my Strauss coach for a week before we start rehearsals [for “Die Frau ohne Schatten”] in New York. So it’s insanity. But I also — this is getting back to the earlier part of the conversation — I need to be sure that I have given myself every possible chance of doing the job I expect myself to do, which means working with the people that I need to work with to prepare for the job that I want to do. Because if I don’t, then I’ll get to the job and that’s where the impostor syndrome will take you down. Because you have nothing to dilute it with. You cannot combat it. It’s like “you’re not really prepared for this.” Well, yes, I am, actually. I have just done this, this, this, and this to prepare. So I have learned that. Stack the deck as far as I possibly can in my own favor before I even get there.

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The previous world record, as listed by the Guinness World Records Russia, was set by the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra. According to the entry, Sergey Stadler conducted the orchestra and performed the symphony cycle by Beethoven in eight hours and three minutes on November 26, 2017 on the stage of the St. Petersburg State Academic Capella.

The open-air concert, a line-up of the China Shanghai International Arts Festival (CSIAF), had been originally scheduled for two days running from October 6 to 7 at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre with tickets distributed free of charge, though Xu Zhong admitted that it has long been his ambition to finish the cycle in one day. Just less than two hours before the concert was supposed to start, CSIAF announced that the concert had to be rescheduled to 8th due to bad weather. Xu’s wish is granted.

The nine symphonies will be performed back to back in a chronological order from 13:00 to 22:00 on 8th, including a two-hour intermission from 16:30 to 18:30. Xu Zhong will conduct the CSIAF Orchestra consisting of members from the Shanghai Opera House and Suzhou Symphony Orchestra. Under the same umbrella of CSIAF Orchestra, musicians of the Shanghai Opera House will perform symphony Nos 1, 2, 6, 7, while musicians of the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra will perform symphony Nos. 3, 4, 5, 8. Both forces, numbered over a hundred, will take to the stage in the Ninth. In the fourth movement Ode to Joy, they are joined by the Shanghai Opera House’s Chorus and its four soloists: tenor Yu Haolei, soprano Song Qian, baritone Dou Qianming and mezzo Wang Xiaoxi.

According to Xu, rehearsal of the cycle began earnestly in mid September by both orchestras. Each symphony has undergone at least six sessions of rehearsal as he always puts artistic value over sportive fun. In this cycle he intends to stick to the orchestra size of Beethoven’s time when conducting Nos. 1-8, and apply the actual tempo according to the metronome markings by the composer himself in 1817.

No stranger to Beethoven’s symphonies, Xu has conducted all the nine symphonies multiple times, working with Chinese and European orchestras in the past. “I’m very happy to have conducted the Ninth in Haifa, Catania, Syracusa, Verona, Dieuze when I was involved with the artistic leadership of Teatro Massimo Bellini, Arena di Verona and Haifa Symphony Orchestra. Being a kapellmeister means I get used to working for long hours without a gap. This is like a dream coming true.”

He opts for the critical edition published by Bärenreiter.

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