Latest news with #TristanundIsolde
San Francisco Chronicle
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Nina Stemme says farewell to Isolde after 126 performances
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Nina Stemme tilted back her head after the final notes of her 126th and last Isolde performance, and her eyes filled with tears. She was hugged by tenor Stuart Skelton and mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill as the audience in Marian Anderson Hall stood and applauded Sunday evening. A few days earlier, Stemme thought back to April 2000, when Glyndebourne Festival general director Nicholas Snowman and opera director Nikolaus Lehnhoff walked into her dressing room in Antwerp, Belgium, asking her to sing in the English company's first-ever performance of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde." 'I really did think they were joking,' she recalled. 'My colleague, Christopher Ventris, said, 'No. No. They're not joking. You have to be careful.'" Stemme went home to Sweden, considered the offer with vocal coach Richard Trimborn and made her Isolde debut on May 19, 2003, at the Glyndebourne Festival with Robert Gambill as Tristan and Jiří Bělohlávek conducting. She chose to sing her final two Isoldes 22 years later with the Philadelphia Orchestra and music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who conducted the opera for the first time on June 1 and coaxed a luminous rendition from a premier orchestra at its peak. 'I'm 62 now. I gave it to my 60s to sing these big roles and now I've dropped Elektra and Brünnhilde, and Isolde is the last daughter on stage that I'm singing," Stemme said. "I decided this years ago. This is how it works and every year that I was able to sing Isolde feels like a bonus and a privilege.' Stemme was friends with Birgit Nilsson, one of the greatest Isoldes and Brünnhildes, who died in 2005 at age 87. 'I was on the verge to go down to her in south Sweden to study Isolde but of course me as a young singer with little kids at home, I never felt ready," Stemme said. 'At that time when we got to know each other, I was singing mostly a lyric repertoire.' Skelton sang with Stemme in Wagner's 'Der Fliegende Holländer' at the Vienna State Opera in 2004 and his Tristan was paired with Stemme's Isolde in New York, Munich and Naples, Italy. 'It's as radiant now as it was when I first heard her sing it in Glyndebourne way back in the day,' he said. 'No one knew really who Nina Stemme was to a certain extent. Certainly I don't think anyone was ready for what she brought to Isolde even then.' A conductor learning from the singer Nézet-Séguin first worked with Stemme in a performance of Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 2007, didn't collaborate again until performances of Strauss' 'Die Frau ohne Schatten' at the Met last fall. 'The breadth of her experience with the role is just guiding all of us, me, but also the orchestra, who is playing it for the first time in understanding the flow of the piece, understanding their shades and the colors, and that is invaluable," Nézet-Séguin said of Stemme's Isolde. "It was wonderful for me to benefit from it." Singers were on a platform above and behind the orchestra, with LED lights below setting a mood: red in the first act, dark blue in the second and light blue in the third. Stemme wore a dark gown in the first and third acts and a shimmering silver dress in the second, while Skelton, baritone Brian Mulligan (Kurwenal), bass Tareq Nazmi (King Marke) and tenor Freddie Ballentine (Melot) were largely in black, and Cargill (Brangäne) in a lighter-colored costume. Showing sets and complicated directions weren't necessary, she conveyed Isolde's emptions with her eyes, smiles and nods. During the great second-act love duet, Stemme and Skelton clinked water canisters. 'Twenty-two years ago I could act the young princess that was in love or hated her love for Tristan,' she said. 'I have other colors to my voice now and I'm older so of course this interpretation will change. I feel more at home in the middle range and with age, of course, the top notes are not as gleaming as they used to be, but I can make up for that in other ways hopefully — on a good day.' Stemme's future schedule includes less-taxing roles, such as Klytämnestra in Strauss' 'Elektra' and Waltraute in Wagner's 'Götterdämmerung.' She leaves behind an outstanding recording of her Isolde, made from November 2004 through January 2005 at London's Abbey Road Studios with tenor Plácido Domingo and conductor Antonio Pappano. Lise Davidsen makes her Isolde debut next year Anticipation is building for the next great Isolde. Lise Davidsen is scheduled to make her role debut on Jan. 12 at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu and then open a new production at New York's Metropolitan Opera on March 9 with Nézet-Séguin. 'She said how happy she is to in a way symbolically pass this role, pass it on to her, in a way through me,' Nézet-Séguin said of Stemme. 'That is almost like a torch that has been carried.' 'At heart," she said, "I'm still Madama Butterfly or Mimì.'
Winnipeg Free Press
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Nina Stemme says farewell to Isolde after 126 performances
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Nina Stemme tilted back her head after the final notes of her 126th and last Isolde performance, and her eyes filled with tears. She was hugged by tenor Stuart Skelton and mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill as the audience in Marian Anderson Hall stood and applauded Sunday evening. A few days earlier, Stemme thought back to April 2000, when Glyndebourne Festival general director Nicholas Snowman and opera director Nikolaus Lehnhoff walked into her dressing room in Antwerp, Belgium, asking her to sing in the English company's first-ever performance of Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde.' 'I really did think they were joking,' she recalled. 'My colleague, Christopher Ventris, said, 'No. No. They're not joking. You have to be careful.'' Stemme went home to Sweden, considered the offer with vocal coach Richard Trimborn and made her Isolde debut on May 19, 2003, at the Glyndebourne Festival with Robert Gambill as Tristan and Jiří Bělohlávek conducting. She chose to sing her final two Isoldes 22 years later with the Philadelphia Orchestra and music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who conducted the opera for the first time on June 1 and coaxed a luminous rendition from a premier orchestra at its peak. 'I'm 62 now. I gave it to my 60s to sing these big roles and now I've dropped Elektra and Brünnhilde, and Isolde is the last daughter on stage that I'm singing,' Stemme said. 'I decided this years ago. This is how it works and every year that I was able to sing Isolde feels like a bonus and a privilege.' Connection to Birgit Nilsson Stemme was friends with Birgit Nilsson, one of the greatest Isoldes and Brünnhildes, who died in 2005 at age 87. 'I was on the verge to go down to her in south Sweden to study Isolde but of course me as a young singer with little kids at home, I never felt ready,' Stemme said. 'At that time when we got to know each other, I was singing mostly a lyric repertoire.' Skelton sang with Stemme in Wagner's 'Der Fliegende Holländer' at the Vienna State Opera in 2004 and his Tristan was paired with Stemme's Isolde in New York, Munich and Naples, Italy. 'It's as radiant now as it was when I first heard her sing it in Glyndebourne way back in the day,' he said. 'No one knew really who Nina Stemme was to a certain extent. Certainly I don't think anyone was ready for what she brought to Isolde even then.' A conductor learning from the singer Nézet-Séguin first worked with Stemme in a performance of Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 2007, didn't collaborate again until performances of Strauss' 'Die Frau ohne Schatten' at the Met last fall. 'The breadth of her experience with the role is just guiding all of us, me, but also the orchestra, who is playing it for the first time in understanding the flow of the piece, understanding their shades and the colors, and that is invaluable,' Nézet-Séguin said of Stemme's Isolde. 'It was wonderful for me to benefit from it.' Singers were on a platform above and behind the orchestra, with LED lights below setting a mood: red in the first act, dark blue in the second and light blue in the third. Stemme wore a dark gown in the first and third acts and a shimmering silver dress in the second, while Skelton, baritone Brian Mulligan (Kurwenal), bass Tareq Nazmi (King Marke) and tenor Freddie Ballentine (Melot) were largely in black, and Cargill (Brangäne) in a lighter-colored costume. Showing sets and complicated directions weren't necessary, she conveyed Isolde's emptions with her eyes, smiles and nods. During the great second-act love duet, Stemme and Skelton clinked water canisters. 'Twenty-two years ago I could act the young princess that was in love or hated her love for Tristan,' she said. 'I have other colors to my voice now and I'm older so of course this interpretation will change. I feel more at home in the middle range and with age, of course, the top notes are not as gleaming as they used to be, but I can make up for that in other ways hopefully — on a good day.' Stemme's future schedule includes less-taxing roles, such as Klytämnestra in Strauss' 'Elektra' and Waltraute in Wagner's 'Götterdämmerung.' She leaves behind an outstanding recording of her Isolde, made from November 2004 through January 2005 at London's Abbey Road Studios with tenor Plácido Domingo and conductor Antonio Pappano. Lise Davidsen makes her Isolde debut next year Anticipation is building for the next great Isolde. Lise Davidsen is scheduled to make her role debut on Jan. 12 at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu and then open a new production at New York's Metropolitan Opera on March 9 with Nézet-Séguin. 'She said how happy she is to in a way symbolically pass this role, pass it on to her, in a way through me,' Nézet-Séguin said of Stemme. 'That is almost like a torch that has been carried.' After all those Isoldes, Stemme feels more a Puccini heroine than a Wagnerian star. 'At heart,' she said, 'I'm still Madama Butterfly or Mimì.'
Spectator
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
The glorious elitism of Glyndebourne
There is nowhere in May more beautiful than England with the hawthorn out, the clear light and a thousand shades of green. And there is nowhere more beautiful in England than Glyndebourne, the Sussex opera house between the Downs and the coast. Every visit to the ancestral pile of the Christie family brings joy and we lucky folk who caught the new production of Parsifal were granted double rations. Wagner's final music drama is a first for Glyndebourne and completes a triptych of the Master's late work, following productions of Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. As Larkin wrote of Sidney Bechet: 'Oh play that thing!' Music-lovers have been coming to this blessed plot of land outside Lewes since 1934 when John Christie invited three refugees from Germany to establish a shrine to Mozart.
The Guardian
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Morally questionable': inside the epic Lars von Trier exhibition in Copenhagen
I am not even inside the building but a creeping sense of foreboding has already set in. As I try to find the entrance to Nikolaj Kunsthal, a gothic-style former church in Copenhagen, I hear the lamenting strings of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde – the soundtrack to Lars von Trier's 2011 end-of-the-world film Melancholia. Inside, I take a seat in a tent-like structure, similar to the one in the film, and watch as a planet hurtles towards Earth, Wagner still blasting away. Nearby lies a long table, covered in white linen and laid out for the celebration of a lifetime – but clearly abandoned midway, and now adorned with dead flowers and burnt-out candelabras. Upstairs, black and white projections – a ticking clock, trains moving through postwar Germany, scenes of sex and drowning – play as the ominous male voice that features in Von Trier's 1991 film Europa does a countdown. 'On every breath you take, you go deeper,' he says. 'On the mental count of 10, you will be in Europa.' With the world still reeling from the arrival of Trump 2.0, and Europe at war amid increasing polarisation, looming AI takeover and the escalating climate emergency, the experience feels strangely current, even though it is intended to take viewers back to the visual world of the notorious Danish film-maker, and immerse them in it. 'It is almost a new paradigm,' says Helene Nyborg Bay, artistic director of this arts venue, as she takes me round Breaking Darkness, the Von Trier exhibition she has curated. 'We had this belief in one united country or the United Nations after the second world war. Now we see there are new thoughts coming through, unfortunately. Lars von Trier shows some of these.' But in other very important ways, Von Trier is deeply irrelevant in 2025. As well as attracting criticism for the treatment of women in his films, he has been involved in multiple scandals. In 2011, while promoting Melancholia, he told the world's press at the Cannes film festival that he was a Nazi and 'understood' Adolf Hitler, after which he was banned. He later apologised, saying: 'I am not antisemitic or racially prejudiced in any way, nor am I a Nazi.' Six years later, amid the rise of the #MeToo movement, musician and actor Björk, who starred in his 2000 musical film Dancer in the Dark, said he sexually harassed her during its making, claims he has denied. But despite this, the exhibition has attracted unprecedented interest, with record numbers at the opening – 2,000 in three hours – including younger generations. Why? 'Lars von Trier is such a strong film-maker with such a strong aesthetic sense that he could be a visual artist,' says Bay who, despite the controversies, believes that Von Trier's work and its themes – love and despair, good and evil, faith and human choice – have a lot to offer contemporary audiences. 'We live in new times,' she says. 'On the other hand – he might have been ahead of his.' Personally, this longtime Von Trier fan says she 'was never offended by his way of looking at women', although she concedes that some younger women have been. Rather than avoiding the subject, she says: 'It's interesting to have this dialogue.' Clips from the films have been combined with designs and installations – even incorporating the architecture of the building – to recreate the themes and moods of five films made between 1991 and 2011: Melancholia, Europa, Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves and Dogville. There are a few props dotted around, including a fur coat worn by Nicole Kidman in Dogville, and the wedding dress worn by Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia, which is displayed entwined in roots that climb the walls. But film memorabilia is by no means the focus of the show. The exhibition doesn't just fill the space, it also spills up into the clock tower which, via steep stairs, visitors are led up to by a white line, like the ones that represent the set in Dogville, all to a soundtrack of Vivaldi. Although probably the most site-specific of the installations, this feels the least immersive of the five, because it does not have the same emotional power as, say, the Melancholia installation – which is entirely captivating. But absent of moving image, it serves as an effective contrast to the others. Bay invited young designers to interpret the 'universe of Lars von Trier' in such a way as to create an experience that does not depend on the viewer having seen his films – including the generations for whom she believes he has been 'abandoned'. Her inspiration for the show came from an exhibition of photos of Von Trier's work at the Perrotin gallery in Paris. She is particularly interested in seeing how the under-30s who visit her exhibition 'adapt into his universe'. She says: 'It's more like a feeling or an atmosphere. And it is also a subconscious way of understanding some topics in life – or trying to.' Von Trier, who has Parkinson's disease and is now in a care centre, has not been directly involved, but he has given the exhibition his blessing. He attended the opening night on FaceTime with the help of his ex-wife. And, during this launch, Bay noticed a group of producers from Zentropa, his production company, sitting in the shelter in front of the oncoming planet. Unusually, the exhibition also features a critique of the film-maker and his work, by Sofie Riise Nors, a Danish feminist satirical graphic novelist, who has accused him of romanticising and fetishising femicide, while criticising his artist-muse relationships. In a comic strip piece about Von Trier, created for the exhibition, Riise Nors appears as a radio host doing a phone-in about the director and explaining her problems with him. She questions the notion that he creates 'strong female characters' and accuses him of using women's lives as a 'kind of currency'. She also mentions Björk's #MeToo accusations. 'His characters,' this host says, 'seem more like a mirror for his own fantasies about women than they are a mirror for female identification.' She describes Melancholia – which has an 'iconic' scene showing Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg being pulverised by a planetary collision – as an example of 'Von Trier's penchant for staging women's deaths in an artistic and aesthetic way'. She also cites Björk's Dancer in the Dark character Selma, who bursts into song at her execution. It is also worth reminding ourselves that Nicole Kidman gets chained to a giant metal wheel in Dogville, while Gainsbourg cuts off her own clitoris in Antichrist. Could this two-pronged approach, celebration and criticism, provide a model for dealing with the work of more cancelled artists whose work is still deemed worthy of appreciation? Bay says that, even though Von Trier and Riise Nors have wildly different opinions, they share a capacity for self-reflection. 'In that way, it's also a starting point for talk and for conversation.' Riise Nors isn't so sure. 'The fact that we are still creating celebratory exhibitions about Lars von Trier is testimony to the fact that he was never really cancelled – at least not in Denmark.' She thinks the country holds on to such a 'morally questionable' figure because of his huge international success and would have liked to have seen more critical contributions in the exhibition. 'You can still be a great artist,' she adds, 'and very problematic at the same time.' Breaking Darkness is at Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, until 27 July
The Guardian
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
On my radar: Nell Zink's cultural highlights
Nell Zink was born in California in 1964 and grew up in rural Virginia. Before becoming a published novelist in her 50s, she worked a variety of odd jobs including bricklayer, technical writer and secretary, also running a postpunk zine. In 2014, with the help of Jonathan Franzen, she published her debut novel The Wallcreeper, followed closely by Mislaid, which was longlisted for a National Book Award. Her seventh novel, Sister Europe, out 24 April, charts the unravelling of a Berlin high-society party – Vogue called it 'a worldly hangout novel of 21st-century manners'. Zink, a committed birder, lives outside Berlin. Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam This is the book that's keeping me cheerful. It is just impossible to feel sorry for yourself if you're reading the memoirs of Nadezhda Mandelstam, whose poet husband Osip died in the transit camp to the Siberian gulag in 1938. She is incredibly wise and stoical on dealing with this Stalinist terror of the 1930s, and writes about it really beautifully, with a deep belief in humanism and a constant critique of using people as means to an end. Reading about what it was like to be on the run from Joseph Stalin, you think, wait a second, I don't have it so bad. Tristan und Isolde at Staatstheater Cottbus, Germany, until 4 May I have seen three different productions of this Wagner opera in three different places in the past year or so, and the hands-down winner was the production in Cottbus, because they took it seriously. It was a straight-up production, which the Brechtian ones in Dessau and Berlin were not. The finale was so beautiful and moving that the audience had tears in their eyes. And the theatre in Cottbus is a beautiful art nouveau building – a real destination – where the best seats in the house are €32. It's worth a trip, and Tristan und Isolde is playing again soon. Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Produkt at the Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany, until 14 September Vaginal Davis is a queer drag performer from LA who absolutely has that ironic, pop-cultural, intertextual aesthetic down cold and walks a tightrope over punk and drag, combining the two while always annoying somebody on either side. She's also a photographer and film-maker, and just somebody who is very creative and constantly churning out material that's funny and beautifully pointed. She moved to Berlin 20 years ago and now there's a solo show of her work – including some large-scale installations – at the Gropius Bau in Berlin. I haven't seen it yet but it'll be extremely interesting. Lit Link, Croatia Lit Link is the most brilliant literary festival put on by two Croatians. They invited me to speak years ago and then again in 2023. They pick different countries each year – this time it's Sweden and Norway – inviting not only writers from those countries but also editors and translators. They rent a van and go from Zagreb down to Istria, and it's just insanely pretty. Last time we stopped in Labin, a jewel of a hill town with an adorable little theatre looking out over the Adriatic. It's fun to ride around in a van and go to these unbelievably beautiful places and then read to the Croatians. Nightingale It's the time of year to hear nightingales, but they are threatened because people keep their gardens and public parks too tidy. A nightingale needs thick underbrush in which to build a nest where no one can see it. The nightingale's song is never what people think it is. It's great by the standards of the Romantic era when people sang in an incredibly sappy way that today we'd probably find unbearable. He's super-horny and whiny, like, 'Pleeeease, baby, please'. But it's important to have nightingales pestering you every night, starting in April, so don't rake up the leaves or trim the hedges; let things get a bit chaotic. Nebra Sky Disc at the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, Halle, Germany This is one of these precious artefacts found by accident by guys with metal detectors in Germany and it's apparently the oldest depiction of the night sky that we have on Earth, dating back to 1800-1600BC. I saw it for the first time recently and it's really gorgeous – a blue-green bronze disc with gold symbols of sun, moon and stars. They went out of their way to give it a dramatic setting in the Halle prehistory museum, with beautiful lighting and really good information. Halle is a nice town with an art academy that's worth a visit. Having art students in a town improves it, I think.
