There is a new Lohengrin on the block
mainThe Austrian tenor Andreas Schager, a huge hit at Bayreuth this summer, is to sing his first Lohengrin next Tuesday at the Vienna State Opera.
Move over Jonas and Klaus Florian.
Make room for this guy.
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Andreas has been turning heads in the business for the last few years. Since his Apollo in Toulouse in 2014 he has added Parsifal, Bacchus, Siegfried and Tristan to his repertoire and will be singing Lohengrin in Prague next month after his Vienna dates. He’s a wonderful singer and extremely nice man, to boot. I just hope he doesn’t take on too much too early…
To much too early??? He is already singing Siefried and Tristan 😉 ! Schager is in the business since years, saw his Tristan already in Meiningen at least 6 years ago. Many knew that he will be the coming Wagnertenor. Maybe his PR people have been slow or he didn’t have any.
Too much too early ??? And of course Siegfried…should wear my glasses when typing!
Too early? He is 47 years old.
That’s quite an orchestra he’s riding there…
Does piotr beczala need to move over too?
I don’t know, but Alagna didn’t need to be told, he just decided to move over one day.
No. Beczala is indeed a fine Lohengrin with, at present, unmatched sweetness and warmth.
Nope!
And on 22 and 24 February 2019 Andreas will sing another Lohengrin at the Prague National Theatre. By the way, next week on 25 and 26 October he will be the main star in a world premiere of the monumental project Faszination Wagner in Prague (State Opera Orchestra, Selcuk Cara’s film, Matthias Fletzberger conducting). Andreas is great!
Sorry I can’t be i Prague next week. I’m in Budapest, instead.
There’s nothing particularly high in the Winterstürmer, though there is much fiddling around the top of the passaggio, yet he manages to make it, at times, seem rather effortful. His instincts are right; but I’m not sure his technique is up to it. And it doesn’t seem like a full complement in the pit…
Siegfried Jerusalem 2.0 ?
I wasn’t at Bayreuth this year but Schager was a powerful Siegfried in the 2018 Dresden Ring – the stand out performance of the cycle for me – alongside some outstanding Thielemann conducting. Yes – he’s been around for some time but the voice has just apparently hit a sweet spot. And he’s a credible actor. Go hear him.
It was over 5 years ago when Andreas sang in act 1 of Siegfried with me in Berlin when the official Siegfried didn’t show up due to him mistaking the starting time…… he had another performance in the Philharmonie that evening! He was rock solid and since then justly became Mstro. Barenboim’s preferred Siegfried…….
Beautiful, bright, slim yet powerful voice! He is a great singer and a very nice man. A humble artist with a professional attitude, totally different from these overrated, egomaniac so called superstars who are not even compatible with this repertoire but yet are given big jobs singing or conducting these things.
Loud and vulgar..should be calling out train arrivals.
The top picture looks like an undertaker delivery landing at the wrong place.