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By Rebecca Schmid

Any Konzept-Production of the Ring is bound to draw very strong reactions. This past week, I heard people call Francesca Zambello’s depiction of the American empire's fall everything from obvious and clichéd to the final step away from Wagner’s association with the Nazis. My impression... is mixed. But to my eye, Zambello’s Ring contained highly inventive gestures that are both in keeping with Wagner’s

By Earl Love

Yesterday afternoon’s “Götterdämmerung” led me to reappraise somewhat Francesca Zambello’s feminist, ecological, anti-plutocratic staging of this “Ring”. Although I didn’t see any kids in the audience, it struck me that some of the corporate types (many of whom were probably first timers judging from their whoops of delight over the comic parts) just might get the intention behind the video barrage of filthy oil refineries, smog, sewer sludge and polluted water bodies

By John W. Lambert

The MCANA, our oldest association of cultural journalists (established 1956), held its annual meeting in San Francisco in June, in conjunction with the first complete performances of the San Francisco Opera's "American" Ring, produced and directed by Francesca Zambello and featuring Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde.

One of the things I dislike about new "interpretations" of the Ring are the superficial attempts to add something original or contemporary. This Ring, for example, is being called "The American Ring" or "A Ring for America" or whatever. Since it is directed by a woman in 2011 it has to be seen from a contemporary and female or feminist point of view. But of course one is only going to change things that are easy to change. One is not going to add some atonal riffs to the music. It's easier to play with the

  June 17, 2011   This week I am attending my first annual meeting with the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA) in San Francisco, where San Francisco Opera is staging a new Ring cycle.   Monday night's Das Rheingold (June 14) was a dud. Dead on arrival. The singing overall was barely adequate, and the music, under the direction (that's going too far—I'd have to say lurching "beat") of Donald Runnicles was even less

Oakland ex-pat in Paris Gertrude Stein is the woman of the moment here in San Francisco, with two exhibitions in town devoted to her and her artistic milieu, so I couldn't resist cribbing her title for a discussion of Francesca Zambello's production of the Ring Cycle. In its original (and partial) incarnation at Washington's National Opera it was dubbed "A Ring for America". Now three-quarters of the way through the Cycle (which I'll be covering more fully elsewhere) I wanted to muse about just what makes this

The epic struggle in Wagner’s Ring exists on many levels, pitting man against nature, god against man, and, ultimately, god against himself. Recent productions of the cycle have bred visions at once radically different in their inspiration and fundamentally similar. Most strikingly, video projections have served as a powerful means of communication. Francesca Zambello’s 2006 staging, currently being reprised in its entirety at the San Francisco Opera, uses mesmerizing video to evoke images of nature. In Das

As a young journalist in Berlin, I have observed an unendlessly fascinating classical music scene. New music and avant-garde programming thrive in off-spaces and converted industrial buildings. Operatic stagings no know bounds. Just like the city itself, the arts world is always becoming, but never being. Not that the burden of history doesn’t show its face. In some ways, everything still seems doubled: the Konzerthaus in the east, the Berlin Philharmonic in the west; three opera houses, two broadcast orchestras and choruses.

What I’ve been doing in recent years is writing for a local online daily named MinnPost.Com, both features and reviews. It pays well and offers almost unlimited space. They want, however, to cut back on their arts writing. I’m suggesting that people complain, but one thing Minnesota Lutherans hate to do is complain.

I recently interviewed a group of music competition judges, just as they were on their way to Houston for the annual Ima Hogg Competition. (That’s a name that never loses its charm!) You can read my interview here. All this made me reflect, as I do from time to time, on the pros and cons of music competitions. And in a sudden epiphany, an entirely new way of running a music competition occurred to me. Permit me to share it with you. My competition would be open to any musician in the world under the age of 30, who has already

Finale would hardly be a sufficient word for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s last regular concert of the season, a transcendent performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony conducted by 82-year-old Bernard Haitink. It was more like a consummation. Or perhaps summation. This exquisite, valedictory Mahler seemed to total up everything I have admired for decades about Haitink as musician, artist and thinker. A few days after that June 5 concert I came across an interview Haitink did with The Guardian in 2009 when he was conducting

Seattle Opera’s production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde during the summer of 2010 used a rare instrument called the Holztrompete (Wooden Trumpet). Wagner specified this instrument to represent the natural pipe of a peasant that he wanted during Act III of this opera. There are not many Holztrompetes in the United States, but Seattle Opera was able to get one on loan from the Joe and Joella Utley Brass Instrument Collection at the National Music Museum, at the University of South Dakota, in Vermillion, South

By Susan Brodie

The women of the Ring don't immediately strike one as remarkable, especially when they appear in groups. Das Rheingold's three Rhinemaidens are variants on the Lorelei, seductive, ditzy, and ineffectual guardians of the gold. After teasing Alberich they become completely unglued when he gets fed up and steals the treasure....

>h5>By Jens F. Laurson When the Washington National Opera mounted Francesca Zambello's "American Ring," co-produced with San Francisco, it provided the catalyst for much debate, much of which was healthy. Did Mme. Zambello ravage the master's work to force her own agenda upon it, or did she free the Ring's inherent messages for consumption by the Washington audience

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By Paul Hertelendy

The San Francisco Opera has enjoyed a rich history of Ring cycle performances, ever since its epic 1936 cast of Flagstad-Melchior-Rethberg-Schorr... but the SFO was never in as much of a Wagnerian sticky wicket as 30 years ago, when the Siegmund in Die Walküre canceled at a late hour....

By John Rockwell

In the San Francisco Bay Area, 1967 marked the apex of the hippie phenomenon although ... for those of us who were there at the flowing source of hippiedom, by 1968 the well was beginning to dry up.... For us, Das Rheingold was perhaps better seen as the triumph of love over money-grubbing Pigs.

I just finished seeing the latest San Francisco Opera installment of Wagner's Ring Cycle, Siegfried. I've seen it live five or six times in my life now, and feel that my experience level has reached the Barely-Dangerous stage, though nowhere near the Very-Dangerous stage addict who sat next to me once who'd seen it 47 times. So, now that I'm an obstreperous junior at Wagner Citadel U, my return visits to class are beginning to saddle me with ever-so-ponderable questions. Niebelungenfragen,

By Paul Hertelendy  We came from out of town In vain. We held the tickets, But my long-run orchestra abruptly vanished, Having merely crumble remnants for its payroll, Leaving padlocks bolting doors, And tears wiped off too many cheeks. The orchestra had taken me vicariously on dizzy rides To distant centuries and kingdoms Via many pilgrims' dreams and piper's fables, Stoking our imaginations - From Petrouchkas, Pastorales, La Mer, The Flying Dutchmen, Lincoln Portraits,

By Wes Blomster

In view of the centrality of the erotic impulse in Richard Wagner's operas and their long identification with sexual desire, it is surprising that almost none of Wagner's love-stricken characters actually make love.