Opera House of the Year goes to same old, same old
OperaFor the third year running, the 43 critics of Opernwelt magazine have awarded the Opera House of the Year title to…. Frankfurt.
What’s more, Frankfurt Opera Choir is Choir of the Year, Lydia Steier is Director of the Year for Aida and Frankfurt’s Tannhäuser is co-winner of Performance of the Year.
Looks like you can please most of the critics all of the time.
Hideous anyway as those critics must be questioned – most of them are clueless
Explain?
Have a laugh watching a gaggle of them –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBqkfIeBqsg
That’s another award.
“Critics”
Most reviews reveal zero about the performance and maximum about the reviewer
That is a particular case of the general rule that words only define who speaks them, never whom (in this case what) they are talking about 😉
Stuttgart used to clean up year after year too, so this hegemony is nothing new. Loebe still seems to be the Überintendant, especially with a fashionable new GMD under his belt.
The new GMD, Thomas Guggeis, is damn good and works much to hard to be dismissed as “fashionable.”
@Alviano: I didn’t say he wasn’t good, just that he is fashionable in the way Mäkelä, Peltokoski etc are.
Not sure what the productions in Frankfurt are like. However, Stuttgart does not deserve any such award. I recently saw their new production of Il Trovatore and it was outrageous even for modern German Regietheater standards. It was wildly incoherent with no point behind it, including everything from beach balls to random members of the chorus wearing Nazi uniforms (all symbols censored)
What does the Trovatore (a ghastly production indeed) have to do with the award for Dora as best new opera?
I’ve watched a wonderful La Juive that did not put the plotline into another time period – a very effective modern dress staging and performance. There was also a Tannhaeuser with the plot set in 1940s America, with a staging that my friend highly praised. I did see a Rheingold at Stuttgart which was dramatically questionable
Well deserved award. The house is well run, the orchestra and choir superbly musical and flexible for repertoire from Monteverdi through contemporary, with strengths above and beyond German repertoire, with soloists and guest conductors chosen for musicality over big names. Productions are visually lean — Frankfurt is not a huge city, after all — but always effective in service of the music.
Beats the “contemporary” rubbish offered at the Met.
I’ll have you know that Frankfurt regularly puts on new works as well, and you’ll probably call it rubbish without ever seeing its score (perhaps you don’t even know how to read a score)!
I wonder what they’re doing differently from other houses, to keep earning these awards?
They should rename the award “Eurotrash Opera House of the Year.”
How about the “Ami Dreck” that the Met is presenting this season ?
Frankfurt does have a good opera company and it deserves praise. However, if Frankfurt weren’t to be found in such a metropolitan area with many newsoutlets and critics but somewhere else (say Dresden), it wouldn’t be award-winning that often as the winner is chosen by first past the post.
Opera House of the Year???
Exactly how many New Opera Houses opened?
That’s right.
None.
All the old ones just pass the awards around until everyone gets at least one!
Frankfurt’s Tannhäuser was one of the worst Regietheater nightmares I’ve ever seen. It didn’t even pretend to be telling Wagner’s story.
This was the Tannhäuser synopsis from the program:
Synopsis
The German author Heinrich von Ofterdingen fled to America when the Nazis seized power. In exile in California, he took up a professorship at the Catholic Maris Stella University, while enjoying great literary success. His novel “Montsalvat” was awarded the 1956 Pulitzer Prize. At the peak of his fame, he vanished from public eye without a trace.
Act I
He’d become a recluse in his flat, where he’s been working on a new novel for months, without any success. Fueled by morphine tablets and the Bacchanal from Wagner’s Tannhäuser, his literary fantasies come to life. Venus, Goddess of Love, appears to him, awakening his latent erotic desires: she conjures up a young student, whose beauty sweeps Heinrich off his feet.
But he ends up longing for his ordered life as a professor—much to Venus’s chagrin: she tries everything to make him carry on writing, warning him about how cold human society can be, but Heinrich is adamant, and suddenly finds himself back in his university.
He sees a delegation of pilgrims being sent to Rome with a statue of Our Lady. Deeply moved by their devout singing, Heinrich is overcome with remorse. When his fellow professors find him, they suggest he take up his former post again. Heinrich agrees, after initial doubts, but suspects his secret fantasies will come back to haunt him.
Act II
Elisabeth can hardly wait to see her former mentor again. When Heinrich arrives, there is a tentative moment of reconciliation between them. Wolfram von Eschenbach, who’s secretly in love with Elisabeth, takes bitter note of this.
Landgraf Hermann, Maris Stella University’s Dean, launches an in-house university poetry competition, at which participants are asked to fathom the “Nature of Love.” While his professorial colleagues demonstratively praise platonic love in their attempts, figures from his erotic dreams appear to Heinrich. He interrupts the competition in an increasingly offensive manner, before kissing a young student for all to see. The audience is shocked and attacks the once so-celebrated author. The crowd only calms down, for now, when Elisabeth stands before him protectively.
Deeply hurt by Heinrich’s transgression, Elisabeth begs that he be given a second chance. Hermann agrees: Heinrich must ask the Pope for forgiveness, but can only be socially rehabilitated if he is pardoned. Tortured by feelings of remorse, Heinrich agrees.
Act III
Elisabeth has been waiting for months, longing for Heinrich’s return. Wolfram tries to comfort her, but achieves the opposite: it becomes clear to Elisabeth, in a nightmarish vision, that Heinrich will never find mercy on earth. She asks the Virgin Mary for help. Wolfram sees his chance: he approaches Elisabeth, but she rejects him.
Wolfram finds himself back in Heinrich’s bedroom and imagines how Elisabeth might end her life. Heinrich appears: he tells Wolfram about his unsuccessful search for forgiveness before submitting to the goddess Venus’s power.
Elisabeth’s has procured Heinrich’s unfinished manuscripts. How will future generations see the life and work of the disgraced author?
What does this Scheisse have to do with the opera ?