Salzburg Festival (3) - ‘Hommage à Kurtág’: Brahms, Kurtág, Schumann, and Ligeti, 22 August 2026

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Brahms: Trio for violin, horn, and piano, in E-flat major, op.40
Kurtág: Hommage à R.Sch. for clarinet, viola, and piano, op.15d
Schumann: Märchenerzählungen for clarinet, viola, and piano, op.132
Ligeti: Trio for violin, horn, and piano

Noah Bendix-Bagley (violin)

Tabea Zimmermann (viola)

Daniel Ottensamer (clarinet)

Stefan Dohr (horn)

Kirill Gerstein (piano)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

This is what I call programming. Kirill Gerstein essentially brought together two unusual chamber ensembles, him common to both, to perform works by two celebrated pairs of composers: contemporary master and disciple (though more complicated than that) themselves in some sense responding to their predecessors. Joined by Noah Bendix-Bagley and Stefan Dohr for the Brahms and Ligeti for violin, horn, and piano, and by Tabea Zimmermann and Daniel Ottensamer for works by Kurtág and Schumann, Gerstein wrought a moving centenary tribute to György Kurtág, whose life and work in many ways offer a conspectus of the Western classical tradition, such as one would only find at a festival such as Salzburg’s. 

For the Brahms Horn Trio, opening balance sounded a little odd, or perhaps it was more a matter of my ears adjusting. At any rate, this was a fine performance of a work with nowhere to hide—and no reason to need such a place. The first movement’s metrical and harmonic ambiguities offer difficulties for players and listeners alike, but there was no problem at all on the former side. This is difficult music and should never be thought easy listening, but these were musicians who enabled form to emerge as emotional as well as structural progression. The scherzo came to life as an ebullient, even disturbing homage to Mozart and Beethoven, wild in its Brahmsian discipline and in the occasional hint, never realised, that such discipline might be overruled. Its trio offered darkly Romantic balance and, within, a new world of chiaroscuro, prior to a still more intense reprise of the scherzo. The slow movement was darkly introspective to begin with, developing into defiance rather than merely stating it, whether outwardly fragile or overtly impassioned. More than once, I could not help but notice affinities with Die Walküre, its material as well as its mood. (I must consult the score for myself.) The sense of musical ‘lighting’ – slightly different, I think from shading – offered by all three players was exquisitely expressive, founded in yet never to be reduced to harmonic motion. The release of the finale was no less felt, or more remarkable, for its complexity, striking a keen balance between hints of the cyclical and the developing variation that is the essence of so much Brahms. Here was the culmination of a mighty river’s flow. 

Kurtág’s Hommage à R.Sch. brought the ‘other’ ensemble onstage. The first miniature, ‘(merkwürdige Pirouetten des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler)‘ created a scurrying theatre stage of the mind, unmistakeably in the line of Webern, but equally unmistakeably Kurtág. Semi-whispered, hyper-Romantic confidences in the second effected a beautifully moving synthesis at the close, to be disrupted immediately by Florestan/Schoenberg’s third, equally beautiful in Pierrot-like violence, and further balanced or rather sublated in fourth and fifths movement in which semi-return to the mood of the second was, in nicely Schumannesque fashion, complicated by helter-skelter response. The sixth movement, longer than the first five combined, though still relatively brief, brought a properly Kurtágian haunting in response to Pierrot’s comings and goings, crystalline perfection in work and performance the means to emotional and intellectual integrity and depth. This was the air and indeed landscape of another planet, our revels ending with the unshowiest, yet most certain of drumstrokes from Ottensamer: a soldier’s tale, perhaps. 

After the interval, Gerstein, Zimmermann, and Ottensamer returned for Schumann’s late Märchenerzählungen, the first in context offering a whimsy not unrelated to Kurtág’s. This was unmistakeably a fairy tale opening, the page turned: ‘once upon a time…’, the story told with palpable delight from all concerned, and in as ultimately harmonious a world we can imagine this side of Mozart. Its successor proved similarly touching: this may not be music ‘for children’, but there seemed little doubt they would like and ‘get’ it. The rapt euphony of the third piece was also touching in its simplicity. (Again, few composers after Mozart have had that gift, although Kurtág does.) It brought tears to my eyes. Similarly good-humoured, the fourth and final tale was more overtly fantastical, even Hoffmannesque—which returned us to Kurtág and his homage. 

For the Ligeti Trio, the players seemed more immediately at ease than in the Brahms, their instruments ‘speaking’ and indeed singing eloquently from the off. If any other composer occasionally came to mind, it was first Berg (especially on violin), later Bartók (especially on piano); but in reality it could have been none other than Ligeti—and ‘late’ Ligeti at that.  Every note and every relationship between them enchanted as strongly as Schumann’s or Kurtág’s. Such Mozartian ease with such unusual forces announced in the first movement continued throughout all four, the second offering a riveting walk on the post-Bartókian wildside. Bendix-Balgley’s harmonics, Dohr’s contrapuntal lines, Gerstein’s well, everything combined to mesmerise. Talk about having rhythm, Ligeti included—and harmonic rhythm just as much. The third movement sounded at first as if a response to an imagined Schumann march, before pursuing other, very different, though not less fantastical paths in a directness that again suggested the smiling ghost of Bartók. And if hearing this work in the same concert as Brahms’s Trio for the same forces rightly brought difference rather than kinship more strongly to the fore, there was an undeniable Brahms-like satisfaction in what we heard here, ever more so in the final movement: simply itself and unanswerable. Bells tolled for someone or something: maybe for us. If so, the composer of Le Grand Macabre might have reminded us that it would not have been the first time we had failed to notice.

Salzburg Festival (2) - Hadelich/VPO/Thielemann: Brahms, 22 August 2026

Grosses Festspielhaus

Violin Concerto in D major, op.77
Symphony no.1 in C minor, op.68

Augustin Hadelich (violin)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images:© SF/Marco Borrelli

A frustrating concert, this: on account of neither Augustin Hadelich nor the Vienna Philharmonic, but rather of Christian Thielemann’s conducting, which certainly had its moments, its passages even, yet could readily have offered much more. Consistency can over over- and underrated: no one wants consistent mediocrity and the twin curiosity and courage not to rest on laurels and thus to try something different are often to be lauded. Proof of the pudding lies in the eating, though, and difference for its own sake will rarely be a good thing. Here, above all in the First Symphony, a strange eschewal of harmonic rhythm, tracing Brahms – of all composers – at worst as if this music were merely a succession of melodies and at best in a fashion born more of operatic than symphonic drama, culminating in a strange two-movement dash to the finish, as if Thielemann had simply had enough, fell some way short of the deep, intense satisfaction that is this composer’s wont. If it would be unjust to speculate that his mind might have been in Bayreuth, it was difficult to escape the conclusion that his heart was. 

I shall return to the Symphony. The Violin Concerto offered better news, although that was mostly Hadelich and the orchestra’s doing, Thielemann showing himself an able, sensitive accompanist rather than equal partner. How much can one tell from an opening phrase and, more broadly, an opening tutti? Here, quite a bit: it was rhetorical, theatrical even, something of a curtain-raiser, without really leading to what the curtain might reveal on Hadelich’s entry. Throughout, all in Hadelich’s interpretation felt born in the notes, in their connection, and what that created, constituting the work’s form as both structure and emotional fabric. Hadelich’s golden tone, variegated yet centred, harked back to a mythical yet enduring idea of a Golden Age of violin playing, intriguingly set against a somewhat darker toned VPO (not something one especially associates with that orchestra). Thielemann proved ever attentive, visibly and audibly listening and responding, yet rarely assertive, as will often, ideally, be called for; and when it was, skirting slight mannerism. It was telling, no doubt, that the truest instrumental drama came in the cadenza: not one I recognised—I wonder whether it was Hadelich’s own. At any rate, it learned lessons from celebrated predecessors, whilst treading its own path with confidence and genuine rejuvenation. The way Hadelich built tension through counterpoint that became harmony, extending Brahms both as himself and as a true disciple of Bach, was invigorating, yet pointed to an apparent lack of harmonic interest on Thielemann’s part. It was not grievous; one hears far, far worse, especially from the ‘authentic’ brigade, but something was missing, if here more by way of contrast. It was Hadelich, doubtless rightly, but perhaps to an undue extent, who gave the impression of inviting the orchestra back in. 

Wind playing – not only the oboist’s, though certainly his – of the highest distinction marked the second movement. There was a definite lateness without mawkishness to this ‘Adagio’: a heartfelt tribute and even a farewell to a Classicism that underlay all and yet was no longer quite within reach. That beautiful yet melancholy thought elicited string (solo and section) consolation before darkness emerged beneath the surface. This, then, was truly a movement of Romantic anguish, born from within rather than applied to it. Hadelich’s song – and how his violin sang – was an achievement rather than a given, however little it lay in doubt. Thielemann imparted a strong sense of what might have been—in more than one sense. A strong turnout from the Phlegm Liberation Front notwithstanding, Brahms ultimately won out in a finale launched with little rather than no break. It may have been a matter of where I was seated, but early on the VPO’s tone sounded oddly harsh here. Transitions and other shifts were generally well handled, but ultimately this was a movement (for me) more observed than shared—again, largely on Thielemann’s account. For an encore, Hadelich gave what I believe to be his own arrangement of Schumann’s ‘Träumerei’: unfussy, resourceful, and closing on magical harmonics. 

Thielemann initially seemed more obviously at home in the Symphony, conducting from memory and shaping the opening of the first movement into a compelling, if not truly harmonically founded, drama. (The greatest Brahms conductors from Furtwängler and Klemperer to Barenboim would immediately show what was missing.) A palpable sense of tragic narrative was present, though, whatever slight reservations one might have felt. A strange noise from within the audience – electronic interference? – disrupted a little, but orchestra, composer, and, here at least, conductor emerged victorious from that tussle. Had the performance continued in similar terms, one might well have located it broadly as lying within the tradition of Karajan—and there are far worse things than that. Hints of motivic Beethoven towards the close already suggested, though, a little of what else might have been underplayed earlier. There was, though, undeniable eloquence to the second movement, not least through the way the orchestra ‘spoke’—again, perhaps a little operatic, but there is more than enough room for different approaches here. The emotional ambivalence of its opening well established the contest to come, even if overall tone was a little on the bright side for Brahms (at least to my taste). 

Following a further barrage of coughing, the third movement began at a tempo that felt faster than any I could recall. If it was difficult objectively to square with ‘Un poco Allegretto e grazioso’, it had its own logic in lifting of mood and proved surprisingly convincing—until textures became more congested than flowing. Its later course, though, was straightforwardly odd: slowing massively and ending in perplexing disappointment. The finale likewise began well enough, laying out its material clearly and bringing an undeniable sense of suspense. That horn call was all one could wish for, and the principal theme sounded beautifully, if in oddly soft focus. ‘Più Allegro’, though? It was certainly più, but to my ears considerably troppo. What ensued was driven in a way one might have thought – hoped – had gone out of fashion with Toscanini, albeit without his preparation and aesthetic. Harmonic understanding and communication seemed to have gone out of the window in order to catch the next train home.

Salzburg Festival (1) - Der Prinz von Homburg, 20 August 2026

Felsenreitschule

(concert performance)

Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg - Maximilian Schmitt
The Electress – Tanja Ariane Baumgartner
Princess Natalie of Orange – Kathrin Zukowski
Field Marshal Dörfling – Lauri Vasar
Frederick Arthur, Prince of Homburg – Georg Nigl
Colonel Kottwitz – Anthony Robin Schneider
Count Hohenzollern – Magnus Dietrich
First Officer – Konstantin Igl
Second Officer – Gabriel Rollinson
Third Officer – Philipp Schöllhorn
First Lady of the Court – Hanna Park
Second Lady of the Court – Freya Apffelstaedt
Third Lady of the Court – Brigitta Listra
Sergeant, Second Orderly – Marcel Durka
First Orderly – Johannes Bamberger

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Mention, let alone celebration, of Hans Werner Henze’s centenary has proved surprisingly muted, if not entirely unmarked—at least in continental Europe. Simon Rattle, a longstanding advocate, has given performances of Henze’s oratorio The Raft of the Medusa with his new orchestra in Munich, following on from an outstanding performance here in Salzburg last summer. Munich, long an important centre for Henze performance, saw a new staging of The English Cat by the Bavarian State Opera over the winter of 2025-6, so strictly not a new production this year, although close to being so. El Cimarrón, a scenic music theatre piece rather than an opera, has been given in Rome, Aix-en-Provence, and the composer’s birthplace, the small Westphalian city of Gütersloh. By and large, though, opera and symphonic performances have proved little less frequent than usual over the past decade, which is to say strikingly less frequent than during his lifetime. 

Whilst it was difficult not to feel a certain disappointment at the Salzburg Festival’s decision to give Der Prinz von Homburg in a single concert performance – sold out, be it noted – rather than a full staging, we should still be grateful for this celebration of the twin centenaries of Hans Werner Henze and Ingeborg Bachmann, born but six days apart in 1926. Theirs was a fruitful partnership extending over roughly a decade, beginning in 1955 with the composer’s provision of incidental music for Bachmann’s radio play Die Zikaden, its German narrator having fled to an Italian island. (Both Henze and Bachmann had taken that road south too.) A crucial context for this opera, the first of two, was the 1957 song-cycle Nachtstücke und Arien, with which Henze, with typical theatricality, staged his separation from an avant-garde of which he had never really been part in the first place. (One should be wary of his accounts of what happened, but that in part makes them all the more valuable aesthetically. Yet, as so often with Henze, the more he voiced his dissociation from German art, the more he also found himself drawn to it. Kleist’s play Prinz Friedrich von Homburg had achieved and, in a sense, suffered great popularity during both the Second Reich and the Third, and thus stood potentially as tainted for Henze and Bachmann as German Romantic music, especially when dealing with a German stage and audience. That held, almost irrespective of the aesthetic admiration its recreators both felt. The effort, then, in this opera not to be German is palpable, doomed, and fascinating—which is not to say that it is only German. (What is, or would wish to be? Pfitzner, perhaps, and probably not.) 

The conflicts at work in the score, not only mirroring but extending and intensifying those in the libretto came through strongly in this account from the ORF Symphony Orchestra, Ingo Metzmacher, and a distinguished cast. If I felt occasional passages of softer focus earlier on, I think that was in part a matter of listening my way in and also in part also a reflection of Henze’s writing. After all, in In his own words, ‘Der Prinz von Homburg … sets itself against the blind unimaginative application of laws, in favour of an exaltation of human kindness, an understanding of which reaches into deeper and more complex realms than would be “normal” and which seeks to find a place for a man in this world even though he is a Schwärmer and a dreamer, or perhaps because of that.’ There is a distinctive basic sound-world to the opera, blueish in hue, which takes on and sublimates, even to an extent pacifies the militarism one might expect. There is also certainly a strange dream-world that extends from that, heading the cantata Being Beauteous of a few years later, yet nonetheless shaped in trauma by what has gone before: politically, aesthetically, and perhaps ethically too. 

To present march rhythms on the harp, for instance, rather than trumpets and drums, seemed a statement, an act of hostility towards authorities that had brought the world to war in drama as on earth, and might do so again—heightened by the sense of aesthetic persecution the composer himself undoubtedly, if exaggeratedly, felt for himself: cursed, as it were, to be a German composer, however much he may have wished it otherwise. If the orchestra often seemed driven, perhaps by Metzmacher, to tilt the scales, as did Henze and Bachmann, away from unwanted inheritance, in this case towards Stravinsky, victory ebbed away as soon as it was achieved—just as on the battlefield. If the strangely muted world of interiority took longer to become dramatically compelling, there is arguably point to that, both in work and in performance, Whether there is stylistic resolution or even quite coherence becomes a more pressing issue without staging; eclecticism can be too readily condemned, but also too readily celebrated. When, at its best, stylistic conflict is put to dramatic use, one heard it all the more readily. Registering with ever greater immediacy was Henze’s inner conflict between Schoenberg and Stravinsky – the Symphony in Three Movements and ‘whiter’ ballets sometimes too close for comfort – alleged determinism and freedom, calculation and dreams, depth and beauty, and so on registered with increasing power. 

So too did, if less in the guise of a mediating power then humanistic intervention, understanding of the Prince of Homburg as a strange, postwar (even in war) Wozzeck-, even Christ-figure in a heterodox passion of sorts. If a concert performance could less readily convey than full staging quite who the characters on stage all were, more musical patterns could suggest something of that narrative—arguably more strongly than the work itself warrants, mind and ear compensating in unusual ways. Georg Nigl’s Prince took on the contradictions and struggles – the Prince’s and Henze’s – as his own in a performance of dramatic commitment that outweighed ‘mere’ aesthetic considerations. If occasionally he sounded a little stretched, more often Nigel emerged invigorated by the challenge. Magnus Dietrich’s honeyed Hohenzollern and Anthony Robin Schneider’s dark-chocolate Kollwitz particularly caught my ear on the male side, as on the other side of the gender divide did Kathrin Zukowski’s imploring, inwardly strong Princess Natalie and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner’s rich-toned, quasi-contralto Electress. Maximilian Schmitt ensure that, whilst the Elector’s justice might be cold, it had its own tonal allure. If Henze sometimes tilts the scales a little too obviously – Bachmann less so, I think – the cast did much, even in concert, to present a conflict worth agonising over. If the Prince’s celebrated battle-cry, ‘In Staub mit allen Feinden Brandenburgs,’ bidding Brandenburg’s foes return to dust, can no longer offer Kleist’s jubilation, it was all the more notable that ambivalence that also undercut mere tragic inversion emerged at the close. 

Whether so understandably anti-militaristic, anti-Prussian a recreation ultimately quite adds up, given inevitable, nagging comparison with Kleist, remains an open question. A few years later than the opera, Pierre Boulez spoke scathingly of Henze as a ‘lacquered hairdresser, who pays homage to an utterly superficial modernism’, here specifically in ‘an unfortunate rehashing of Verdi’s Don Carlos’. (Henze, it is only fair to add, had made for his part considerably more outrageous claims against Boulez, Stockhausen, and others.) If imaginative staging might have been able to do more to address such claims head on, this concert performance pointed further to the need to find out for ourselves. It also connected us with another centenary, falling as it did 100 years to the day after the Felsenreitschule’s first use as a performance venue by the Festival: for Max Reinhardt’s staging of Goldoni’s Il servitore di due padroni. The riding school has of course been used since for a host of memorable stage and concert performances, most renowned of all a filmed Don Giovanni conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Should the current encounter point the way to a staging somewhere soon for Der Prinz von Homburg, it will prove still more welcome, but this will remain an important evening in its own right.

Tchaikovsky: Child of Glass, Not Entirely Serious, 13 August 2026

Opera Holland Park

Tama Matheson (director, actor)
Jayson Gillham (music director, piano)
Stephen Wicks (assistant director, choreography)
Suzy Kohane, Oliver Holland (actors)
Téo Debreuil (ballet soloist)

On the hottest day of the year, Opera Holland Park turned from its own season to the period in which it generously permits use of its theatre to other, smaller companies and events. The first, following on from last year’s Beethoven: I Shall Hear You in Heaven, was Not Entirely Serious’s Tchaikovsky: Child of Glass. Reuniting co-producers Tama Matheson and Jayson Gillham and actors Suzy Kohane and Oliver Holland, Matheson and Gillham tripling and doubling as writer/director and pianist/music director respectively, the new play welcomed Royal Ballet soloist Téo Dubreuil to the team, with impressive, often moving results. 

Tchaikovsky’s life presents, of course, a very different story from Beethoven’s, but both, like many others, have clear narrative arcs, the latter with undeniable tragic elements, the former an undeniable tragedy. (I found this writing another composer biography, that of Schoenberg: how well a life structures its works, at least in certain cases.) Here the emphasis naturally lies on the composer’s homosexuality and broader queerness, Tchaikovsky initially appearing onstage in a dress, only to lose and never regain it. There are other stories to tell, no doubt, but in a general ‘bio-play’, it would be perverse to ignore this as guiding principle. Russian culture ministers, should they still exist, may beg to differ. Across today’s world, an increasingly ominous space for LGBTQ+ people, and not least in a United Kingdom in which Rowling & Co. seem to call most of the legal shots, we hardly need reminding of how fragile acceptance can be, of how distant liberation remains. 

Matheson brings to onstage portrayal of the composer the same energy and commitment shown not only in his writing but also his general animating presence. Put simply, this would not be happening without him—though it is no one-man show. In narration and dialogue, there is a readiness to recapture, even in necessary translation, the different style and voice of Tchaikovsky’s age. A good deal of basic – and sometimes less basic – biographical information is conveyed: perhaps some time a little too much, although the balance is difficult to strike. The outlines, however, as well as telling detail are very much present, as indeed they are in the contributions of his fellow actors, called upon to summon up a chorus of portrayals (literally in the ‘court of honour’ some have claimed drove Tchaikovsky to his death). I mean no disrespect to writer or actors, though, when I say that it is elements of music and dance that linger longer and hit deeper. Such, after all is their nature—arguably in general, but certainly in the life in question, its agonies as clearly as any sublimated into art. Gillham’s pianism, crystalline, scintillating, seductive and more, guides us through a distinguished tasting-menu of Tchaikovsky and others (Rachmaninov, Mozart, Bizet, Wagner, Saint-Saëns), original piano music (solo or concerto) and arrangements delivered with equal ease and magic. The ‘Bacchanale’ from Samson et Dalila puts in an apt, orientalist appearance for a scene in Paris, in which the composer succumbs once again to the sins and liberation of metropolitan flesh. Here, Debreuil’s personification of Tchaikovsky’s urges, his dreams, and ultimately, even in death, his hopes truly commands the stage. His is a part lying somewhat in the line of Tadzio (Britten’s more than Visconti’s—or Mann’s): more knowing, perhaps, yet also crucially beyond good and evil.

NYO/Adès - Liszt, Adès, and Berlioz, 8 August 2026

Royal Albert Hall

Liszt: Mephisto Waltz no.1, S.110/2
Adès: Dante: Part 2, ‘Purgatorio’
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, op.14

National Youth Orchestra

Thomas Adès (conductor)

Images:  BBC / Chris Christodoulou

To hear the National Youth Orchestra is always a treat. The enthusiasm of young musicians, not a cynical bone in their bodies, can hardly be gainsaid; but enthusiasm will only get one so far. These musicians have technical and musical capabilities beyond their years; many will have professional careers ahead of them. Just look at the NYO’s alumni. They will have many more rehearsals than a professional orchestra could every hope for. (Eat your heart out, Celibidache!) There is also the sheer joy of hearing an orchestra of this size too, again unaffordable on the professional scene for almost anything but Gurrelieder—and often not even then. Berlioz knew a true orchestral pianissimo required a far greater body of musicians than one was ever likely to hear, rendering his works either utopian or unperformable or, on some measure, inadequately performed in reality. What we hear today from ‘period’ and ‘modern’ orchestras alike, whatever the ideological claims of the latter, will almost always fall short of what he required. Such is life, at least under capitalism. We stretch our resources to breaking-point and beyond, and ultimately make do with less than perfection; otherwise, we should hear nothing at all. It was nonetheless a treat to hear the Symphonie fantastique played with musicians within the range of his expectation, if still towards the lower end (albeit with more powerful, modern instruments). 

Before that, the first half of this concert conducted by Thomas Adès offered music by Liszt and Adès himself. The greatest musical avant-gardist of the nineteenth century, Liszt was stranger neither to ideas nor to practice in the realm of musical ‘progress’: neither on the piano nor the orchestra, inventing for the latter the new genre of the symphonic poem. So important were they to Wagner that he actually played down some of his own prior innovation, here strictly preceding that of Liszt, so as to incorporate Liszt’s poems into his musico-historical schema. The first Mephisto Waltz has a not dissimilar conception, reminding us that there were orchestral works before Liszt, as there have been many after, that may not strictly be classified in that way, but which at least come close. (Ask Berlioz, for one.) No one writes – plays, listens – in a vacuum. Coming to this music for the first time or the hundredth – the latter unlikely, for we hear it far less often than we might – no one would have failed to register the NYO’s musical, indeed human energy from the conductor’s first downbeat, indeed before that too. Unanimity of sound, but also of purpose, reached through collaboration rather than dictatorship, was apparent here and throughout the entire concert, whether in the opening phrase or the whirlwind that ensued, string crescendi a remarkable case in point (more difficult than they might sound). It was quite a ride for all of us. Handling the sudden change of tempo for the love music is a difficult task: how to ensure necessary contrast but also ‘symphonic’ continuity. If Adès proved stronger in the former than the latter, there was nonetheless much to admire and be thrilled by—especially in the return to full throttle. Moreover, all orchestral solos were taken exquisitely (again, very much the case throughout the concert). 

Adès’s ballet Dante was written for the Royal Opera House and Opéra de Paris for the septcentenary of Dante’s birth. Here we heard the second of its three parts, ‘Purgatorio’. Its performance seemed once again to be outstanding, NYO musicians clearly relishing the opportunity to work with a composer on his music, in a performance it is difficult to imagine being surpassed. I felt decidedly ambivalent to it as music, though, a promising opening leading to outright bathos. The first six of its seven sections contains recorded material: baqashot chants, as revealed in Edward Venn’s useful note, connecting both with the composer’s family history and themes in Dante. They were fascinating to hear, as was, at the music’s best, their incitement to and/or emergence from orchestral material, be it for solo instruments, groups, or something approaching a full ensemble. I am not sure the writing always escapes orientalism, arguably all the more pronounced in frequent combination – almost as if we had not progressed from Saint-Saëns – of tonality and ‘fantastic’, ‘Oriental’ colouring. The microtones of the ‘real thing’ had considerably more intrinsic character. Despite the tendency towards film music, one could imagine it danced—and that was of course part of the point. 

There were certainly thrills to be heard when we reached the final ‘Ascent’ in ten horns or five trombones standing together to play. When joined by bells, though, the score ended up sounding uncomfortably close to a television ‘Christmas special’. It made a noise, as did the orchestra, but beyond that? Wagner advised Liszt not to write a ‘Paradiso’ movement for his Dante Symphony, declaring depiction of paradise beyond the powers of music: advice Liszt wisely heeded, substituting a ‘Magnificat’. Given the nature of this musical approach, I think I shall similarly refrain as listener. Whatever my misgivings, a poorly-behaved audience – slurping ice cream, dropping things on the floor, taking phone calls, air conducting, and more – loved it. 

And so, to Berlioz, gifts of conductor and orchestra united in a performance that threatened to raise the roof even of the Albert Hall, yet lacked nothing in subtle detail. The first movement received as fine a performance as I can recall for a long time, its introduction barely registering as such, but rather as one stage, full of potential yet equally absorbing on its own terms, in an ever-developing, shortish symphonic poem of its own. NYO energy could be experienced as coming direct not only from the players but their instruments: testimony to Adès’s wise stewardship in pursuit of Berlioz’s goals. I was especially intrigued by the darker corners, timbre, harmony, tempo, and more united in production of colour and motion. All manner of shades between them and the composer’s signature manic Romanticism made for another captivating journey, as did a graceful, yet at-times-menacing second-movement ball, here given with cornet solo. (Truth be told, I prefer it without, but in this context, it would have been idiocy not to give the soloist his moment to shine, as he certainly did.) 

Once the ballroom had been brought to eyes and ears, the ‘Scène aux champs’ unfolded with every bit as keen a sense of musical narration. Excellent use was made of the Albert Hall; in veritable coups de théâtre, both oboe echo of cor anglais solo (excellent in both cases) and thunder-drums above in stereo with their siblings below made fine use of the gallery. Berlioz would have loved the spatial drama, as, I am sure, he would the Beethoven rarely more than a little below the surface, underpinning the movement’s structure. The darker timbres of the ‘March to the Scaffold’ echoed and extended the aforementioned corners in the first movement, lugubrious and extravert twin sides to the same fateful coin. If ever you had wanted to experience the sound of eight bassoons standing from within an orchestra, here was your opportunity. That was not in itself the point, but rather what was done with them—which proved to be of equal excellence.

A duly rollicking finale combined narrative and musical coherence to the extent that it would have been inconceivable to divide them. As black sabbath bells pealed from the gallery, witches and skeletons came to life and partied below. Coordination was no mean task in itself; bar one slightly precarious moment, quickly salvaged, there was no problem at all. The chase to the close, full of incident, imparted a properly Gothic thrill in this monstrous hall. If it were no surprise to be treated to an encore, the choice of music perhaps was: a darkly sensual John Barry ‘Space March’ from the score to You Only Live Twice. Now that is how you do film music.

Oberon, Proms, 6 August 2026

Royal Albert Hall

Oberon – Nicky Spence
Reiza – Jennifer Davis
Sir Huon – John Findon
Sherasmin – Yannick Debus
Fatima – Rachael Wilson
Puck – J’Nai Bridges
Mermaids – Charlotte Bowden, Jessica Cale

Narrator – Tamsin Greig
Emma Doherty (stage director)

Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Monteverdi Choir (chorus-master: Richard Wilberforce)
Mark Elder (conductor)

What to do with Oberon? Staging it ‘as is’ – or ‘was’ – is barely an option, though it would be far from without interest for those of us who care deeply about its music. Even if we resolved, as well we might, never to see it again like that, we should have gained a greater sense of its conception. The problem lies squarely with James Robinson Planché’s English libretto for Covent Garden, a product of taste (or lack thereof) and time rather than straightforward incompetence, and in its way an object of fascination, yet hardly enough for someone to take the plunge. It lies of course more broadly with the state of English opera at the time. Even if we were to avoid value judgements, taste and expectation are so utterly removed from ours – far more so than, say, eighteenth-century opera seria at the height of its alienation from a Romantically inclined public – that it will not happen. 

Value judgement, moreover, is pretty much impossible to avoid in this case. However much I may attempt to resist temptation – in truth, not so very much – I shall eventually end up quoting Donald Tovey, so may as well do so here. For this strange spin-off from Wieland and Shakespeare, perhaps lost in translation yet also at least a window on a Romantic window on traditions and conceptions that are not ours, Weber ‘poured his last and finest music into this pig-trough’. Or as Clive Brown, only a little more diplomatically, wrote in the New Grove: ‘It is a remarkable testimony to Weber’s operatic genius that, notwithstanding the unmitigated awfulness of its libretto, Oberon has maintained a toe-hold in the repertory. To a very considerable extent he was able to compensate for triviality and inconsequence in the libretto by skilful musical treatment.’ It is not simply the quality of the libretto, though, but the nature of the ‘work’ to which the composer was obliged to contribute. In the words of him who, advancing consumption notwithstanding, had hurriedly and with marked success learned his English lessons in order to provide for his family: ‘The intermixing of so many principal actors who do not sing, the omission of the music in the most important moments – all these things deprive our Oberon the title of an opera, and will make him unfit for all other Theatres in Europe; which is a very bad thing for me, but – passons la dessus.’ 

So, what to do? Or rather, what was done here in this semi-staging – perhaps closer to ‘concert staging’, though the boundaries are as porous as for opera, semi-opera, Singspiel, etc. – from the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras (here in Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique guise)? In a resourceful conception of its own, brought to the Proms rather than conceived by it, the orchestra formed the centre-piece around which Emma Doherty’s direction of the singers took place. Oberon’s horn, seen and heard first from the organ loft, later from its own solo spot onstage, rightly took its place as fons et origo of the action. There was a good deal of activity, running- on and offstage and even, in one case for Sir Huon and Sherasmin, lost en route to rescue Reiza, on the arena. The fate of near-eternal gardening prior to reunion of our pairs of lovers, was illustrated with watering cans and so on. It did not take itself too seriously, but nor did it merely send things up or wallow in self-regard. 

Would that I might say the same for Timothy Knapman’s new English narration, replacing Planché’s dialogue. It was not his fault that many characters simply disappeared from the stage; imagine, say, an Entführung without Bassa Selim. Nor was it necessarily a bad idea to condense those aspects of the action into verse narration. The all-too-obvious quotations from Shakespeare, forced rhymes – readily amused members of the audience laughing some time before their delivery on account of surtitle pre-emption – and general air of facetiousness quickly grew wearing. True, something had to substitute for what would – should – have been theatrical spectacle. It would have been lovely to have had some of that, in some sense reimagined, but that was never on the cards. But there is a line between not taking oneself too seriously and not taking anything seriously at all. One might have been tempted to ask: why bother at all?

Fortunately, Weber and his performers prevented one asking that, and ensured audience gratitude for what is, after all, a rare opportunity. (Covent Garden was due to stage the work a few years ago, but unceremoniously withdrew. My sole previous live encounter was an enterprising performance from New Sussex Opera in 2014.) Bar a couple of highly noticeable occasions when string tuning went horribly awry, the ORR played beautifully. Under Mark Elder’s guidance, the orchestra had none of the inflexibility and astringency forced upon it – and us – by its founding conductor, departed to fight (literally) other battles elsewhere. Accustomed to modern instruments, my ears took a little time to adjust, but Elder and the orchestra brought a lovely intimacy to musical proceedings, feather-light, gossamer intimations of Mendelssohn, equally germane recollections of The Magic Flute and Die Entführung, and more than occasional foreshadowings of Wagner all part of a rich historical mix nonetheless centred upon Weber’s particularity. It was arguably a little too introspective at times, a little too loved by Elder; but if so, that was a fault in the right direction. For herein lay genuine love for the opera less in evidence from narrative condescension. 

This was, moreover, a performance in the best sense considerate to a fine cast of singers that was yet not, for the most part, Wagnerian as we understand the term. As Oberon, at least in this version, Nicky Spence has relatively little to do, but did it well—and with undeniable sense of theatre. His fellow tenor John Findon had considerably more on his plate as Sir Huon of Bordeaux, and rose to Weber’s challenges with winning ease. So too did Jennifer Davis, of course very much a Wagnerian, in the parallel role of Reiza. Both gave spirited and subtle performances that made the most of the dramatic opportunities this particular brand of staging could provide. Much the same might be said of the ‘lesser’ couple – think Papageno and Papagena, albeit with greater balance in their minutes of music – of Yannick Debus as Sherasmin and Rachael Wilson as Fatima: both animated, and stylish throughout, Wilson offering a touching, lovelorn ‘A lonely Arab maid’. With a lovely mermaid duet (Charlotte Bowden and Jessica Cale), all the more bewildering without much in the way of context, a spirited J’Nai Bridges as Puck, and a fine collection of soloists in their own right from the Monteverdi Chori, the score and some at least of its context were brought vividly to life. Tamsin Greig, moreover, delivered her narration with collaborative ease and the keenest ear for verse. As in any ‘version’ of the work, content was not the responsibility of the performers. 

Had Weber lived to return to Germany, he would almost certainly have revised the opera for its stages, introducing recitative and doing away with some of its more problematic aspects. (Hearing it in German translation, however inauthentic on a literalist level, is in aesthetic terms a great improvement.) Maybe some day, someone will offer us Planché’s 1860 revision in Italian (by then, more to the taste of opera-going London). Mahler’s version, which I have never heard in the theatre, probably offers the best way forward in German, treating us not only to the revision of one of the opera house’s greatest animating forces, but also to Mahler’s own extension of Weber’s material for transitional music. But there are worse things than a work that confounds possibilities for performance. (So too, in different ways, do many others—Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron included.) This was a valiant attempt, offering a proper degree of bewitchment. Now where is Euryanthe?

Bayreuth Festival (4) - Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, 28 and 30 July, 1 August 2026

Festspielhaus

Siegmund, Siegfried – Klaus Florian Vogt
Sieglinde – Elza van den Heever
Hunding, Hagen – Mika Kares
Wotan – Michael Volle
Fricka, First Norn – Anna Kissjudit
Brünnhilde – Camilla Nylund
Siegrune, Second Norn, Gutrune – Alexandra Ionis
Rossweiße, Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Grimgerde, Floßhilde – Marie Henriette Reinhold
Helmwige, Third Norn – Magdalena Hinterdobler
Gerhilde – Martina Weischenbach
Ortlinde – Brit-Tone Müllertz
Waltraute – Karis Tucker (Walküre), Anna Kissjudit (Götterdämmerung)
Schwertleite – Freya Apffelstaedt
Mime – Gerhard Siegel
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Fafner – Peter Rose
Woodbird – Victoria Randem
Erda – Christa Mayer
Gunther – Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Woglinde – Katherina Konradi

Curator – Marcus Lobbes
Artistic and technical conception – Marcus Lobbes, Nils Corte
Dramaturgy – Andri Hardmeier
Digital- and AI-storytelling – Roman Senkl
Creative code, visual art – Nils Corte, Phil Hagen Jungschlaeger
Set design – Wolf Gutjahr
Costumes – Pia Maria Mackert

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Eitler-de Lint)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra 

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

‘Auf geb’ich mein Werk: nur Eines will ich noch: das Ende – das Ende!‘ When, in bitter disillusionment, in his great monologue from the second act of Die Walküre, Wotan offers Alberich – absent from the stage, yet present in words, orchestra, and our thoughts – the world he had once striven so hard to retain, now desiring one thing alone, the end, he spoke for all of us. Michael Volle delivered the line with characteristic intelligence and artistry. The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra ‘spoke’ with equivalent excellence as Wagner’s Attic chorus. Goodness knows what happened or did not onstage. I cannot recall and I doubt anyone else can; the likelihood of anyone having cared is still lower. Maybe it happened at one of the times I experimented by closing my eyes or wearing a newly acquired sleeping mask from a Bayreuth branch of Rossmann. (Tentative conclusion: may help relieve symptoms for a short period, but consult a musicodramatic physician should symptoms persist, as alas they did.) The truth, alas, is that most of us had willed that end far sooner, from about a minute or two into the first Rheingold screen-saver foisted on us by ‘curator’ Marcus Lobbes. His recorded utterances suggest barely the slightest acquaintance with the Ring, let alone what it might mean, but such knowledge is doubtless to be disdained in a braver new world than Aldous Huxley might ever have imagined. 

In a sense, there is little else to write, yet somehow, like the pilgrims who returned night after night, more in expectation than in hope, I should make the attempt. What did we learn? That the ‘machine’, the ‘intelligence’, the ‘prompter’ – whatever we wish to call it/him/whatever – was never happier than when covering singers with red, which contrasted with brown, to merge in a sickly terracotta, only to be eclipsed by yellow? That the bizarre ‘historical’ pictures could indeed get worse? The Prologue and first Act of Götterdämmerung took us not very far, from Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan to Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton, the latter understandably covering his face. That whoever/whatever was signally incapable of aligning past production images, all still in terrible resolution, with what was going on, so that Frank Castorf’s legendary alternative Mount Rushmore appeared only when it should not in Siegfried, and that, staggeringly, Patrice Chéreau’s still more legendary Immolation Scene, Dame Gwyneth and all, appeared first in the wrong scene with Brünnhilde? What on earth the advent of the euro was doing there, I refuse even to speculate. We cannot or, better, should not be expected to do the work for these machines. We are not Alberich’s enslaved Nibelungs; or rather, we are, but must free ourselves. Not that we saw them anyway—and the chorus, when it appeared, was denied costumes and indeed visibility. An unfortunate moment of mislighting, were that a word, nonetheless revealed the arrival of its female contingent. The ‘cage’ of screens, front and back, could not function on its own terms, let alone ours.

Occasionally what we saw just about aspired to the level of a mid-price greeting card image; near-aspiration consistently failed to elevate itself into achievement. The obscenity of randomly posting a picture of what appeared to be starving Africans, presumably as a result of a colonial atrocity, as something to gaze at for a few seconds, then having it ‘transform’ into some meaningless shapes, whilst Siegmund and Sieglinde voice their increasing love – and lust – for one another should in itself have been enough to take this idiocy off the stage. That Walküre ‘moment’ fell, if I remember correctly, somewhere between sightings of Thomas Mann (at the right time for Wälsungenblut, though apparently not intended as such) and a pair of keyholes; Lenin and Hitler remained some way off. Who knows? Who cares? Actually, many might care about suddenly being presented with an unmotivated, uncalled-for giant image of Hitler impressed upon them in the Festspielhaus. Where is the obligation to them? A concert performance would have been infinitely preferable; so too would even the worst of stagings.

Someone should have pulled the plug, literally, before this debacle had begun, leaving us with what would doubtless have been a fine concert performance. It might well have been a disappointment, but it would not have been a catastrophe. It would have spared some of the ‘AI’ environmental footprint too, as our own World-Ashes not only wither but blaze across the world. Home to Wagner’s endearing encounter with Jessie Laussot, Bordeaux has endured more temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius this unfinished year alone than it has over the preceding century-and-a-bit during which records were kept. Soon not only revolutionary composers will be expelled; not only the vines whose fruits Jessie’s husband traded on will wither; the city itself may fall.  The end approaches and it does not look pretty; nor does it seem likely to cleanse us and the world Musk, Trump, Lobbes, and others have despoiled. Mention of sustainable theatre, sustainable anything else, or indeed any sort of theatre, let alone drama, now raises little more than a shrug. We are all apparently just to destroy our eyes, ears, minds, and souls sitting in front of screens waiting like the gods in Waltraute’s heartrending plea to Brünnhilde—or what would have been, had it not similarly been obliterated by further image-bombardment. Say what you like about the US occupation forces when they turned the Festspielhaus into a venue for musicals and other entertainments; they never conceived of such an indignity on Wagner’s house, work, performers, and audience, let alone put it into practice.

Again, I shall need to be brief about the performances, since I found it well-nigh impossible to concentrate upon them. Bar a very few inevitable slips, the orchestra continued to play brilliantly for Thielemann, despite its relegation to soundtrack for whatever it was we were compelled to view. Silken strings that darkened on demand; sensuous yet spirited woodwind; brass that rang with the hallowed tones, yet none of the complacency, of altdeutsch tradition: from this palette our necromancer-in-chief painted a series of epics to my ears closer to Strauss (and even at times Debussy) than the Bayreuth Wagner of old, yet certainly with tales to tell. These were aesthetic decisions rather than omissions; this was made clear at points of the highest dramatic tension in Act I of Die Walküre, when suddenly Thielemann shifted to an almost Klemperer- or Barenboim-like focus on growling, foundational harmony, the parallel gear-shift in tempo audible yet convincing. There was often a chamber-music line less in the line of Karajan than beyond him; at least, I discerned it from time to time when the images would permit me to listen.

 

The singers were, of course, still more poorly served—some might say unforgivably so. This may seem an absurdly first-level question for a production, but did our ‘curators’ for one minute consider the implications for the outstanding, hard-working vocal artists placed at their disposal? Either they did and utterly failed in another basic task, or they did not and were thereby negligent. Volle’s class shone through nevertheless, if only sporadically, as did that of everyone else. Perhaps I might have been more critical in other circumstances, but Klaus Florian Vogt’s follow-ups to his excellent Loge, taking in both Siegmund and Siegfried – surely a record? – offered insight throughout and only occasional tiring. He acted too, bringing far more to the stage than a thousand screen-savers might ever: not only in his own dramatic presence, but in engagement with others. If Mika Kares did not quite manage such a feat, our Daland and Fasolt excelled also as Hunding and Hagen. Here is a first-rate artist, readily adaptable, without threat to lyricism, verbal meaning, or their musicodramatic union. Anna Kissjudit stood out to me similarly as Fricka and the First Norn. Her sister Norns, their sister Rhinemaindens, and indeed their sister Valkyries were all excellent as individual voice and ensemble. Camilla Nylund emerged as first among equals, in fiercely committed performances as Brünnhilde in all three of these operas. Far too often, though, these were fleeting rather than sustained impressions, and all on account of the ‘curation’. 

This ‘production’, ‘curation’, or whatever one wants to call it is not about ‘AI’; it is not ‘about’ the Culture Industry or capitalism. It denotes and indeed forms part of their logical, lowest-common-denominator, catastrophic conclusion. Of course the Ring, like anything else, cannot preserve itself from the structures of our current existence; nor should it, even if that were possible. By the same token, it should not – must not – merely surrender to them. The Bayreuth Festival was, for sound reasons, founded as a joint stock company. That was not an endorsement of later-nineteenth-century capitalism; it was a decision necessitated by economic furchtbare Not. To complain about that is to plummet to the inanity level of ‘you have an iPhone, so how can you criticise capitalism?’ There was neither call nor need for this aesthetic disaster, surely the worst in the history of the Festival. If any of us hears again of Lobbes in the opera house, it will be too soon, but this is not the fault of a single person, however culpable he and his ‘team’ may be. We are not all guilty, as the cliché has it; guilty indeed, though, are obsession with technology – as ‘bros’ call it, ‘tech’ – and an economic system so ruinous Alberich might have led the revolution against it. 

The optimistic view would be that, once this is all done, there will be a chance to start again, echoing Harry Kupfer’s vision of a Ring post-nuclear-apocalypse. That now seems merely utopian, however welcome it was to find occasional relief in Siegfried from poor-quality reproductions of Kupfer’s lasers. Wagner situates hope, at the close of Götterdämmerung, in the survivors, the men and women ‘moved to the very depths of their being’ by what they have witnessed. If we have witnessed nothing and merely been numbed to the ever-narrowing shallows of what remains of our being, will not the fires continue to rage until we are all incinerated? Make a Ring about that and just maybe we can still talk, create, and crucially listen. Otherwise, as a composer-conductor in Wagner’s line, soon to work on the twentieth century’s defining production of the Ring here at Bayreuth, once put it: ‘The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses into the air. But do you not think that that might also be the most elegant solution?’

Or, as Wagner, already at work on the Ring project, noted in his diary from revolutionary Dresden almost 120 years earlier: ‘8 May (Monday) Morning once again by roundabout route via barricades to Town Hall. At S. Anne Barricade guard shouts “Well, Mr Conductor, joy’s beautiful divine spark’s made a blaze.” (3rd perf. 9th Symphony at previous Palm Sunday concert; Opera House now burnt down. Strange feeling of comfort.)’ If we do not stop ‘AI’ and the forces behind it, such will soon be all our lot, minus Wagner’s strange feeling and certainly minus redemption, ‘through love’ or anything else. Booing with a fury and unanimity I have never previously encountered ensued: which already returns us, once again, to Wagner and the Dresden uprising. Let us consider this, then, a warning on multiple levels, in the unlikely event it is not too late already.

Bayreuth Festival (3) - Der fliegende Holländer, 29 July 2026

Festspielhaus

Daland – Mika Kares
Senta – Elisabeth Teige
Erik – Benjamin Bruns
Mary – Nadine Weissmann
Steersman – Kieran Carrel
The Dutchman – Nicholas Brownlee

Director, set designs – Dmitri Tcherniakov

Costumes – Elena Zaytseva
Lighting – Gleb Filshtinsky
Dramaturgy – Tatiana Werestchagina

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Eitler-de Lint),
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Oksana Lyniv (conductor)

Images: (c) Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrather

Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Dutchman and Dutchman return, still ship-less, to their small town of still smaller horizons for what may or may not be the last time. They have had a good run by recent Bayreuth standards, rightly so, and are not scheduled for next season. (Minus Tristan, all dramas from Rienzi onwards are scheduled either for this season or next.) Whilst there was naturally immense relief all round at an actual theatrical experience amidst the torture-debris of the ‘AI’-Ring debacle, things were looking a little tired, at least until a third act that continues to pack quite a punch. I doubt this was really the fault of anyone concerned, although Tcherniakov presumably did not return to direct this revival, since there was no production team present for curtain calls. Indeed, what we saw had very much the air of a repertory house revival, somewhat at odds with what is held to be the ethos of ‘Werkstatt Bayreuth’, if infinitesimally so when compared to the horrors that had unfolded the previous two nights. (I shall deal with Die Walküre in a single ‘rest of the Ring’ review following its much-awaited Götterdämmerung.)

Providing, as ever, his own set designs, Tcherniakov presents in the Prelude a pantomime in which the young ‘H.’ (Holländer, we presume) sees his mother hanging lifeless from a house window, shamed by a hypocritical, Peter Grimes-like community that had her yield – perhaps as sex worker – to Daland’s advances, only to be cast aside when no longer of use. His adult return is no seven-year ritual in search of an impossible love, but rather pursuit of revenge against the man and more broadly the community that did this. His whole life, one senses, has explicitly led up to this, as he is welcomed by the venal Daland – maybe he continues to run up such expenses? – and later his wife Mary, acted with palpable compassion by Nadine Weismann, as well as by Senta. Invited to dinner, his plan falls into place when, following interesting initial reluctance that has her decline even to come inside, Senta falls for him. The third act shows the community at large, in mirthless corporate celebration for which the Dutchman’s crew (or whatever they be) notably fail to participate. Shots are fired, Daland falling before his daughter, who nonetheless continues to hold faith in H., to be cruelly tossed aside—as surplus to his requirements as his mother had to Senta’s father’s. Daland’s house and wealth ablaze, the entire claustrophobic Nordic townscape at risk, Mary returns to kill the Dutchman. Senta’s highly disconcerting, hysterical turn between grief and celebration is ultimately transformed into compassion for the woman who has long cared for her. Perhaps, then, as we hear the 1860 post-Tristan ‘redemptive’ ending, there is a form of feminist redemption after all. Men have created and perpetuated this world and its revenge saga; if women survive, they can hardly do worse and might, just might, do better.

Oksana Liniv’s conducting remained the weakest link in the evening’s proceedings (from when I last heard it in 2024). It is a pity she could not have been replaced with someone more able and willing to respond to such a dramatic conception, or indeed any other, of the work. If the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra played well enough, it rarely sounded inspired, and one could hardly blame it. Lyniv’s alternation between pressing too hard and listlessly meandering, the latter especially apparent in a second act that seemed much longer than it was, offered a reversion to number opera seemingly not from aesthetic conviction, but because a more music-drama-focused performance could not be sustained. A sudden change of gear to breakneck speed at the close of the spinning chorus had pit and stage fall apart for several bars, the chorus compelled to find its own way back into sync, quite unaided by the conductor. 

A further sadness lay in the sound offered by a now reduced chorus,  especially at the beginning of the third act. The Festival’s decision to take an axe to what should be one of its crown jewels has regrettably had consequences, notwithstanding the musicianship of those remaining and their new director. In the title role, Nicholas Brownlee had an awkward beginning, intonation surprisingly, repeatedly awry in the first act. He grew into his own, though, to offer a compelling performance later on. Having sung two other challenging roles (Fasolt and Hunding) on two immediately preceding evenings, Mika Kares was undaunted by prospect or reality of Daland, outsinging the Dutchman in the first act and continuing to impress thereafter. Benjamin Bruns and Elisabeth Teige offered an aural, if not necessarily dramatic, glimpse of what a future Siegfried and Brünnhilde might sound like, Bruns impassioned and vocally fearless as Erik, Teige taking all in her musicodramatic stride in a role notorious for its demands. It was heartening too to welcome a fresh-voiced Kieran Carrel from Berlin’s Deutsche Oper to the Green Hill as the Steersman; let us hope this intelligent portrayal will prove neither his last visit nor role here. If I had certain reservations, then, this revival nonetheless proved quite a tonic after the anti-human production horrors of the two preceding evenings.

Bayreuth Festival (2) – Das Rheingold, 27 July 2026

Festspielhaus

Wotan – Michael Volle
Donner – Alexander Grassauer
Froh – Siyabonga Maqungo
Loge – Klaus Florian Vogt
Fricka – Anna Kissjudit
Freia – Evelyn Novak
Erda – Christa Mayer
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Mime – Gerhard Siegel
Fasolt – Mika Kares
Fafner – Peter Rose
Woglinde – Katharina Konradi
Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Flosshilde – Marie Henriette Reinhold

Curator – Marcus Lobbes
Artistic and technical conception – Marcus Lobbes, Nils Corte
Dramaturgy – Andri Hardmeier
Digital- and AI-storytelling – Roman Senkl
Creative code, visual art – Nils Corte, Phil Hagen Jungschlaeger
Set design – Wolf Gutjahr

Costumes – Pia Maria Mackert  

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images (c): Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

The Bayreuth Festival has had a chequered history over its (almost) 150 years to date. It nonetheless remains, or has until now remained, in many ways an object lesson to the rest of the operatic world in how to take art seriously, how to create conditions in which it might be produced and experienced, and much else—not least with respect to the Festspielhaus amphitheatre and covered pit. That the rest of the world has failed almost entirely to heed its example may sadden us, but reflects on that world and us, not on Bayreuth, nor indeed on Wagner. As Pierre Boulez observed, whilst at work here half a century ago on the now legendary ‘Centenary Ring’ with Patrice Chéreau, perhaps with a little exaggeration, if understandably so, Wagner’s ‘diatribes’, written in turn:

… more than a century ago, are still completely relevant, for nothing has changed—the laziness of the repertory theatre, its failings, its precarious functioning, the blind choice of works, the fortuitous casting of singers and players, the lack of rehearsal, the sauve-qui-peut routine. Architecturally speaking, the Bayreuth model has remained a dead letter and we still have Italian-style theatres. … Both visually and acoustically, we continue to witness this permanent defeat of what is truly theatrical, Bayreuth having effected not the slightest improvement.

To strike a slightly less pessimistic note than Boulez, I think Bayreuth has played a notable role in effecting certain theatrical improvements, if more related to staging than stages. That 1976-80 production and numerous others – Ring stagings from Harry Kupfer and Frank Castorf, Tristan from Heiner Müller, Parsifal from Stefan Herheim, Hans Neuenfels’s Lohengrin, Tobias Kratzer’s Tannhäuser, and so on – set standards for and posed challenges to the rest of the world, just as Wagner did, and occasionally, sometimes more than that, they have been taken up, run with, even surpassed. Bayreuth as ‘workshop’ (Werkstatt), the greatest legacy of Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, created the conditions for such innovation, building on the vision and achievements of Richard himself, as well as (whisper it) the best of the Winifred era, brought such artists of vision, Boulez included, to the Green Hill, showing not only the necessary courage to fail but the equally necessary courage to rethink, to revise, to rejuvenate: Wagner’s own celebrated ‘Kinder, macht Neues!’ following that very first festival in 1876.

If,  gentle reader, you sensed a less-than-gentle ‘but’ approaching, I fear you would be anything other than mistaken. Perhaps nothing, especially in the theatre of Tannhäuser and Parsifal, is truly irredeemable; perhaps something can be salvaged from this. Imagining how lies quite beyond my little mind, though perhaps some machine will tell us. For what the Festival, incomprehensibly, has come up with to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the first Ring must be the greatest travesty ever to have been visited on it anywhere at any time, an experience so unbearable five (out of five) people I spoke to afterwards described it independently as the worst thing they had ever seen, one (Stefan Mauß, whom I have permission to quote) adding the unforgettable and entirely accurate phrase ‘visual waterboarding’, and a rebuke not only to Wagner, not only to Bayreuth, but to any conception of art that tiny, human mind of mine will ever be able to entertain. Enter the ‘AI’-Ring, mysteriously and with insufferable pretention subtitled ‘‘Ring 10010110 – vom Mythos zum Code’, seemingly undirected, and yet ‘curated’ by one Marcus Lobbes.

What we saw can be dealt with briefly. (If only one might say the same of experiencing it.) Following a mercifully image-free Prelude, beautifully and imaginatively led by Christian Thielemann, near-peerlessly performed by the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, any sense of drama, opera, or basic humanity deserts us for a parade of banal screensaver images shown upon a curtain in front of the singers, thus largely obscured and left to fend for themselves, wearing identical, indistinguishable, weirdly yet unrevealingly hideous costumes. (Final applause, for those who could bring themselves to engage, proved something of a game in trying to identify who was presenting him-/herself at any point At least it offered the first and only prospect of entertainment in the entire sorry evening.) Sometimes there was a clear reference to the Ring at Bayreuth, the first image being the celebrated representation of the Rhinemaidens in 1876, amidst genuine theatrical wizardry that enabled them to appear as if  swimming in the Rhine. (Yes, as Anna Russell told us, in the Rhine: now on the curtain.) I almost wept upon a brief appearance, in bizarrely low resolution such as would be refused by the least assiduous reviews editor, of Castorf’s Golden Motel, not out of the nostalgia I feel for that production, but because it was vaguely discernible. We did, to be fair, see a few large rings, on apparently female fingers, when the ring should first have been seen on stage with Alberich. Otherwise, endlessly, pointlessly transforming shapes came and went, sometimes returning, few with any relation to what we heard, culminating in an anonymous man and woman who turned into street (or perhaps theatre?) lights, quickly to turn back again. Some more recognisable, if irrelevant images were suggestive of  Ludwig II put in a very brief guest appearance during the descent to Nibelheim, as did very occasional glimpses of other Rheingold productions, but that was it.

The ultimately unforgivable thing was the way this abject, wasteful nonsense distracted from whatever might have remained of the drama. With that going on before our eyes, our ears (at least my ears) struggled for more than a minute or so to keep track of what was probably a very good musical performance. Not only was this entirely at odds with any idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk – in many ways, a problematical idea that will benefit from deconstruction – but with art and even humanity themselves. I managed to hear flashes of an intriguingly mobile, flowing orchestral conception shaped by Thielemann—rather along the analytical lines suggested by Wagner in an 1871 report to German Wagner societies, tracing an entire corpus of interrelated themes from the individualisation of ‘a few malleable Nature motifs’. If I sensed that most vividly in the Prelude, its low E-flat foundational in every sense and exquisitely decorated by some of the fruitiest, bubbliest woodwind I can recall hearing here, that is a comment related in no sense to the performance itself.

Vocal contributions seemed to be of a very high standard too. Not having had chance to remind myself of the cast beforehand, I had a very pleasant surprise in hearing Klaus Florian Vogt, no less, as Loge, the ringing clarity and sincerity of his tone both in consonance with the demi-god’s revelation of uncomfortable truths and in productive contrast with his wheedling strategizing. Michael Volle’s performance, lighter than one often hears from him and in keeping with the specific demands of the Rheingold Wotan, would doubtless have graced any stage, had I been able to follow it adequately; likewise Jochen Schmeckenbecher’s darker hued Alberich, Mika Kares’s evidently lovelorn Fasolt, Christa Mayer’s chalumeau-like Erda, and much else besides, Evelyn Novak's golden Freia and a fine trio of Rhinemaidens included. To claim that I properly heard any of these performance, though, would be entirely misleading, so I shall leave it there. 

According to Tina Lorenz, writing in the programme, ‘Ring 10010110 tells a radically contemporary story about how we are currently witnessing the beginnings of a transformation in the global order’. It may be a ‘contemporary’ story, but its only ‘radicalism’ lies in turning Das Rheingold and presumably the rest into an immersive Fidelio in which we as prisoners finally experience light and fresh air upon its close. The stampede for the doors was unlike any I have seen—or participated in. Some brave souls managed to agitate for opening of the theatre doors during its course and escaped, to the intense envy and admiration of the rest of us. A period of lengthy reflection, absention, and apology would be in order from all involved. Wagner deserves better, as do the musicians and audience. So too does a world, like that of the Ring, on fire thanks to wasteful, ‘technological’ domination.