Saturday, July 25, 2015

I Hope Someone From San Francisco Opera is Listening....

....to the Bayreuth Tristan und Isolde. Stephen Gould, the tenor, is okay; paying attention to the words, a little pressed. Hmm, why, in that acoustic, is he oversinging?

But Evelyn Herlitzius, who is singing Isolde? OMG. There were personnel issues, with the rumored Eva-Maria Westbroek evidently withdrawing, and with.....whatever happened with Anja Kampe that led to her withdrawal.

But there has to be someone available right now who can sing Isolde better than this. The phrase "wobble you can drive through" floats through my head. Sliding into an awful lot of notes, basic tone attractive only at low volume levels.

And she's signed up for Brunnhilde in San Francisco in the next bring-up. Please, it's not too soon to replace her. Someone should be talking to Christine Goerke's agent right now.

4 comments:

Henry Holland said...

[Dismissive tone of voice] Tristan, what. ever. Stephen Gould is an incredible Die Tote Stadt Paul on a terrific sounding pirate from the Deutsche Oper Berlin, conducted by C. Thielemann. Tristan, puh-leeze. [/dismissive tone]

When are you leaving for Bayreuth? Your comments don't bode well for at least one of the operas you'll be going to.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Well, I care about Tristan.

I leave late on Aug. 14, three weeks from yesterday.

Henry Holland said...

I was only kidding of course, just another excuse to mention DTS. :-) Stephen Gould really is incredible on that recording of it from Berlin, but that was also 6 years ago which is a long time for someone who does as much Wagner as he does.

I'm curious to hear how Thielemann conducts Tristan, he conducted one of the greatest performances I've ever heard of anything when he did Elektra at SFO in 1991. Looking at the cast list, P. Racette as the Fifth Maidservant, a small but important part. What a great cast overall and what a great production. Ah, the Lotfi days! :-)

I hope you have a great time in Germany, I've loved it the times I've been there. So much history, both good and bad, and of course the music scene is amazing.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Those Elektras were during my opera interregnum, the several years when I spent all my time and energy on jujitsu and my then-dojo, of which I was a founding member. Everyone I have ever spoken to them (including Gwyneth Jones :) reports that they were epic. Of course Thielemann hasn't been back since.

I thought his conducting very good, though for the singers' sake I'd ease up on some of the tempos a bit, at least those tempos that were school-of-Boehm.

The performance is available on line for the next two weeks.