Christian Thielemann conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden in this performance of Wagner's opera recorded live in 2013. The performance was held for the Salzburg Easter Festival and featured vocalists including Johan Botha, Michaela Schuster, Stephen Milling and Wolfgang Koch.
Although Domingo was younger and Banackova looked more like the sweet and innocent young Madalena than the one played by Tomowa-Sintow in the ROH production, this production was not as good.
Ghiaurov, Freni, and Bumbry were great voices in their time, and they are still effective here -- good enough musicians to put over the quite heavy vocal and expressive demands of their roles.
Wagner's tale of the struggle between spiritual and profane love, and of redemption through love, is given a radical visual update in Sebastian Baumgarten's controversial yet thought-provoking Bayreuth production.
It truly is an historic performance. Domingo looking and singing like a god pouring out golden tones; Renato Bruson sounds, like the sublime Verdian Baritone that he was at that time; Nicolai Ghiaurov proves again that he was one of the greatest "Verdi Basses"; Mirella Freni shows that there was more to her than just being Mimi and Susannah-in fact I can remember reading that at the time of the premiere of this production that there were fist fights (not unusual in La Scala's gallery) between Mirella's many fans--between those fans that just wanting her to continue singing the light lyric repertoire that they were use to her singing and those that felt she should and could sing the lyric-spinto repertoire which, of course, she proved that,indeed, she could (She's still singing more than twenty years later).
The Wiener Philharmoniker mounts, and Andrea Breth stages, this 2007 production of Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin, starring Peter Mattei, Joseph Kaiser, Anna Samuil and Renée Morloc.
Popular movie trailers from 2013
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 2013:
Using massive piloted robots to combat the alien threat, Earth's survivors take the fight to the invading alien force lurking in the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
Lenny has relocated his family back to the small town where he and his friends grew up. This time around, the grown ups are the ones learning lessons from their kids on a day notoriously full of surprises—the last day of school.
Life for former United Nations investigator Gerry Lane and his family seems content. Suddenly, the world is plagued by a mysterious infection turning whole human populations into rampaging mindless zombies.
Natan tells the remarkable story of Bernard Natan, a Romanian immigrant who came to Paris in 1905 and was involved almost immediately with French cinema.
A young boy learns that he has extraordinary powers and is not of this earth. As a young man, he journeys to discover where he came from and what he was sent here to do.
Comments
Have you watched Parsifal - Salzburger Osterfestspiele yet? What did you think about it?