Intermezzo

Happy birthday from Dresden

On 21 May, Dresden celebrated Wagner's 200th birthday with a special concert.  Christian Thielemann, the Staatskapelle, and special guest Jonas Kaufmann entertained a capacity audience in the Semperoper. Thousands more watched on a big screen outside. And now the rest of us can watch on a small screen, inside.

Bottle of Britten

Here's a way to toast Benjamin Britten's 100th birthday on 22 November (and you can always get some practice in earlier, too).

Southwold brewer Adnams has launched a limited edition beer to mark the centenary of the Suffolk-born composer. Adnams’ head brewer, Fergus Fitzgerald listened to Britten's music and read a biography before coming up with the special recipe.

Native Britten is a 4.5% golden wheat beer with banana and citrus flavours, a lightly herbal aroma and a sweet, dry finish. The beer is brewed using solely Suffolk ingredients – malted barley and wheat, First Gold hops and a touch of honey and thyme. Three different label designs will be available, each representing a part of the Suffolk landscape - land, sea and marsh.

Heil Dick

photo source

On 22 May, Bayreuth Festspielhaus hosted a 200th birthday concert for Richard Wagner. Conducted by Christian Thielemann, the Festival orchestra were allowed out the pit for a rare onstage appearance.

Soloists Eva-Maria Westbroek, Johan Botha and Kwangchul Youn performed the first act of Die Walküre, which was followed by extracts from Götterdämmerung and Die Meistersinger. Afterwards, various Wagners and Wagnerphiles gathered for dinner and a brief recital from Klaus Florian Vogt.

If Arte works in your country, you can watch their broadcast. If not, take a look below:

Barenboim, allegro furioso

It was widely expected that La Scala would use the opportunity of today's 2013-14 season launch to reveal the replacement for Stéphane Lissner, who vacates the post of Superintendant in 2015.

But there was no such announcement. Instead, the invited audience were treated to a tirade from music director Daniel Barenboim. He bluntly slammed the organisational inflexibility which he says is behind the failure to come to a decision. This failure, he said, has paralysed programming for the eight months since Lissner announced his departure.

In what might be interpreted as support for the main non-Italian candidate, Alexander Pereira, Barenboim also had some sharp words for anyone bringing nationality into the debate. "When I see discussion about whether the new Superintendant is Italian or not, instead of whether he has culture, whether he can do programming, I find it dreadful."

"What is the difference between Verdi and Beethoven? The birth certificate? I think not."

 

The gatto is out of the borsa

La Scala formally announced its 2013-14 season today, confirming last month's leak.

A full calendar and cast details are now available on the La Scala website.

Another important announcement may be made by La Scala later today.

A cake for Mr Wagner

As Opera Australia prepare their new Ring Cycle, they celebrated Wagner's 200th birthday earlier today via the traditional medium of cake. A specially-commissioned life-sized Valkyrie helmet, full of chocolatey goodness, was taken on a tour of the building before the ritual demolition.

Wagner, ohne Musik

A Wagner documentary without Howard Goodall or Stephen Fry? Yes, it can be done.

Here's the earliest effort: Carl Fröhlich's 1913 silent movie The Life and Works of Richard Wagner. The series of reverential vignettes was put together to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth.

Ideally it would have been accompanied by an orchestra playing Wagner's music at each showing, but the makers didn't want to stump up the required royalties. So they commissioned Giuseppe Becce to craft a Wagner-like score; close enough to sound like the real thing, but different enough to avoid legal retaliation. Becce bore such an uncanny resemblance to Wagner that he was drafted in to act the part of the composer as well.

There's no sound on the video above, so feel free to slam on some Daft Punk.

Glyndebourne Guardian

As you may have already spotted, the Guardian is streaming all six of this season's Glyndebourne productions on its website this summer. Three are live (including the two new productions, Ariadne auf Naxos and Hippolyte et Aricie) and three are recorded. Here are the times:

• Ariadne auf Naxos – Strauss (live broadcast): 4 June, 7pm
• Falstaff – Verdi (recorded 2009): 21 June, 1.30pm
• Le Nozze di Figaro – Mozart (recorded 2012): 12 July, 1.30pm
• Hippolyte et Aricie – Rameau (live broadcast): 25 July, 6.15pm
• Don Pasquale – Donizetti (live broadcast): 6 August, 7.15pm
• Billy Budd – Britten (recorded in 2010): 23 August, 1.30pm

Tartan wars - Kasper Holten bites back

Kasper Holten has kindly spared the time to make a lengthy and constructive comment addressing some of the criticism of La donna del lago and the more general issues raised.  You can read it on the post itself, or below:

Does this man smell? Bollocks!

Scots are fuming over their haggis at John Fulljames's portrayal of Highlanders in La donna del lago reports the Herald.  The director shows them as kilted thugs with matted hair and filthy clothes, going round raping and disembowelling everything in their path in between 2^1/2 octave coloratura runs.

"Turning Highlanders into savages is the clear choice of an author; that's what Rossini and Scott are saying," he claims. "If you look at those films [like Highlander and Braveheart], the Highlanders are hairy. You do imagine they'd be smelly."

But Professor David Purdie, the chairman of the Sir Walter Scott Club, dismisses that interpretation as "bollocks".

"Scott was a great admirer of the courage and characteristics of the Highlanders and lamented the fact they had been separated for so long from southern Scotland by geography, language, politics and religion. Scott more than anybody else helped to unite the Highlands and Lowlands. His great aim in life was the promotion of Scotland as a unity within the United Kingdom."

La donna del lago, Royal Opera House

La donna del lago - Royal Opera House, 17 May 2013 (first night)

The Royal Opera House has pulled together the most perfect cast imaginable for this new production. They more than lived up to expectations, with line after line of the most thrillingly spectacular Rossini singing I've ever heard. Even a production that rivals the recent Nabucco for sheer ineptness couldn't dim their brilliance.

Dinner with Wagner

At the 2013 European Culture Prize gala to be held in Leipzig on 21 May, the theme is local boy made good Richard Wagner, whose 200th birthday is of course celebrated on the next day.

Klaus Florian Vogt (winner of the Music prize) will sing from Lohengrin, and guests will tuck into what were allegedly Wagner's favourite dishes. The menu comes from a book of family recipes handed down to the composer's great-granddaughter, Daphne Wagner.

Andris is on his way to Boston

The Boston Symphony Orchestra have just announced that Andris Nelsons is to become their next Music Director, beginning as Music Director Designate in the 2013-14 season.  He takes on the full role in the following season on a five-year contract that commits him to up to 12 weeks of performances each year. The full press release is below.

The CBSO have confirmed Andris will stay with them until "at least 2014/15 on a rolling contract"; they will make an announcement about future seasons later this year.

While it's possible for one conductor to handle two orchestras, this makes it less likely that Nelsons will be available for the Berlin Philharmonic opening in 2018. 

BSO press release:

Jonas goes straight

Here, with thanks to reader James, it is possible to answer an question that has no doubt pressed many a mind - what does Jonas Kaufmann look like with straight hair? Mozart fans may wish to turn the sound down.

La Scala race approaches finishing line

So who'll be on top at La Scala after Stéphane Lissner leaves for Paris in 2015?  

The short answer - probably music director Daniel Barenboim, who finds it tough to play #2 to anybody. But there remains a post to be filled, and La Scala's press officer Carlo Maria Cella has just confirmed that a decision will be made by the mayor of Milan later this month. He says there are three neck-and-neck frontrunners amongst the many candidates.

First up is the Austrian outsider Alexander Pereira. In charge of the Salzburg Festival since last year, he ran Zurich Opera for 21 years before that. Previous form includes running Vienna's Konzerthaus and, famously, flogging Olivetti typewriters. Good at raising money and starting fights, bad at being Italian - and his artistic choices are often questioned.

Next is Cristiano Chiarot. A former journalist, his entire operatic career has been with the Teatro la Fenice in Venice. He rose through the press and marketing ranks to become Superintendent in 2010. A vocal critic of public spending cuts.

Finally, we come to Sergio Escobar. Since 1998 he has been Director of Milan's Piccolo Teatro, where he plays a largely administrative role alongside artistic director Luca Ronconi. Before that he held management roles at opera houses in Rome, Bologna, Genoa - and, helpfully enough, La Scala, where he was marketing director and assistant to the general director between 1979 and 1990.  His broad exposure to the opera world is tempered by the fact he's been out of it for 15 years.

Crystal balls to the ready.

Cecilia's new baby

The Salzburg Whitsun Festival opens on 17 May with a new Leiser and Caurier production of Norma starring the Festival's artistic director, Cecilia Bartoli. Leiser and Caurier revisit their beloved 1950s in the sombre palette of Italian neorealism.

La Ceci has insisted the musical side reflects Bellini's own era instead of reverting to post-Verdian cliche. Her digging around has resulted in a revised score that reverses habitual cuts. The casting of Norma and Adalgisa has been rethought, and Zurich Opera's period orchestra, La Scintilla, has been drafted in.

Naturally the Decca marketing machine has not missed the opportunity to crank into action. A Norma CD follows hot on the heels of the performance, but with a slightly different cast. Read more and listen to the album on the Guardian website.

Placimathematics

Alongside the Riemann hypothesis and the existence of God, one great question remains unanswered.

How old is Plácido Domingo?

Rumours have long circulated. Has the legendary baritenor, who claims, like Gheorghiu, to have started college at the age of 14, shaved a year or five off his age? His official birth date is 21 January 1941, making him 72. 

The equally legendary José van Dam is amongst the doubters.  He recently recalled how Plácido Domingo once told him he was proud to be a grandfather already at the age of 36. "At the time I was 31, and today Plácido is a year younger than me."

That seals it. Or does it?

Van Dam was born on 25 August 1940, so he would have been 31 in 1971. Yet Plácido's eldest grandchild, the actress and Playboy model Ivonne Armant wasn't born until 16 January 1974, when Van Dam was not 31 but 33. To complicate matters further, paternity wasn't initially acknowledged. Plácido's first 'official' grandchild arrived at a later date, when Van Dam was even older. No-one would question the veteran bass's honesty. But perhaps the passage of time has clouded his memory. It does seem unlikely that his conversation with Domingo could have taken place at the time he recalls, however old Domingo is.

So the mystery remains unsolved. As ever, it seems nothing short of cutting Plácido in half and counting the rings will provide an answer.

Pappano's TV Ring

Rolando Villazón gave us The Genius of Verdi on BBC4 on Friday night.

Next week it's Wagner's turn, as Tony Pappano flits around Europe for the self-explanatory Pappano's Essential Ring Cycle at 7.30.

Macbeth, live from Munich

The latest opera to be livestreamed by the Bavarian State Opera is Verdi's Macbeth. Conducted by Massimo Zanetti, it features Zeljko Lucic and Nadja Michael as Lord and Lady M.

Not for aficionados of the puffy short, Martin Kušej's unsettling production features topless bunny girls, dirty underpants and a mass public wee.

The live stream begins at 19:oo (6pm UK time) tomorrow, Saturday 11 May.

Production trailer:

Surprise surprise

"German soprano Anja Harteros has withdrawn from singing the role of Elizabeth of Valois in Don Carlo for the performance on 11 May due to acute tonsillitis. The role of Elizabeth of Valois will now be sung by Armenian soprano Lianna Haroutounian".