Recording Review: The Complications of a Family Business

Jaap van Zweden leads Siegfried in Hong Kong.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

SImon O'Neill, shown here as Siegmund in Die Walküre, sings the title role of Siegfried in Jaap van Zweden's new Hong Kong recording of the opera. Photo © The Metropolitan Opera.

Richard Wagner intended Siegfriedto be a romp. Certainly, there is a fairy-tale quality to this recording, the third installment of Jaap van Zweden's Ring, recorded in Hong Kong in 2016 with that city's Philharmonic Orchestra and an international cast. But does it do enough to help the reputation of this, the least known and least-loved of the four operas that make up this massive mythological cycle?

DVD Review: Miracles Out of Nowhere

The Royal Opera of Covent Garden mounts Parsifal.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The wounded and the penitent: Gerald Finely as Amfortas and Angela Denoke as
Kundry in a scene from Act II of Parsifal at Covent Garden.
Photo by Clive Barda © 2013 Royal Opera House of Covent Garden

Parsifal is the final completed stage work of Richard Wagner. For better or for worse, it is also the work that  lends itself most easily to radical interpretation. This latest DVD issue of the opera (released earlier this year on OpusArte) comes from the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden, and shows director Stephen Langridge's vision of the opera. He puts a secular spin on this story, re-imagining the Grail legend as a story of innocence lost and miracles achieved, although not always in a way that one would expect.

DVD Review: Back to the Valkyrie Rock

Daniel Barenboim conducts the La Scala Die Walküre.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Nina Stemme sleeps under sun-lamps--er Magic Fire in Act III of Die Walküre. 
Photo by Brescia e Amisano © 2014 Teatro alla Scala.

In the early 1990s, conductor Daniel Barenboim shot to the forefront of Wagner interpreters with a gutty, anachronistic and thoroughly entertaining audio and visual recording of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen from the Bayreuth Festival. That staging, by German director Harry Kupfer, channeled the Mad Max films of George Miller to create a high-octane cycle set along a post-apocalyptic road. In this new cycle, Mr. Barenboim is paired with director Guy Cassiers, who combines the latest technical wizardry with detail-heavy acting to create a bold and entertaining  show.