Just in: Valery Gergiev to conduct Bayreuth next summer
mainPutin’s maestro will make his Bayreuth debut next summer conducting Tannhäuser, it was announced a few minutes ago.
Expect the assistant conductors to be overworked in his absence.
Stephen Gould will sing Tannhäuser, Lise Davidson is Elisabeth and Ekaterina Gubanova plays Venus. The director is Tobias Kratzer.
Davids(e)n. Perhaps the best jugendliche dramatische to have emerged since Studer. Time will tell.
Tobias Kratzer. Expert in building huge doll houses, no matter what opera it is. One of the absolutely non-musical stage directors. His Hoffmann in Amsterdam was terrible. Thank God the singers were absolutely great. They just didn’t deserve Kratzer’s approach. It was difficult to hear them.
https://basiaconfuoco.com/2018/06/04/les-contes-dhoffmann-in-amsterdam/
Politics aside, he’s a major conductor and not incompetent in Wagner, in my experience. Maybe they’ll insist he stay around to rehearse.
Tannhauser sight read! By Gergiev!
As usual silly. He has been conducting Wagner successfully for years.
Turn up on the day. Won’t get more than 1 hour rehearsal , if that! Wagner and Gergiev…no thanks
Ah, that Lohengrin he conducted in 1997 at Covent Garden…glorious.
+1,000%
What time the performance will start? Has Gergiev personally confirmed this?
How far is the closest airport that takes a privat jet to the Festspielhaus?
Will the local police guarantee escort for a free limo ride for the maestro, so he doesn’t encounter delay on the Autobahn?
Somebody has to be made responsible to check, that Gergiev has his watch set to the CET time zone (don’t forget summer time!) that day.
These are the problems that need to be solved beforehand.
Ok I get all the Gergiev hate, and yet putting aside my honest love of his work having played violin under him a few times, in objective terms, he will not rehearse for an hour. If anything, he will demand way more than the rehearsal time that’s scheduled. Gets results and often pisses off people who work with stringent contracts, but I can very much attest to the fact that he is more than thorough.
many a true word is said in jest … your words don’t look like a jest all the same they are likely to be true …. have never worked with him , so cannot say anything about “pissed off” or so 😉