Lohengrin Acts 1 & 2 screening

Unlike New York’s Metropolitan Opera or London’s Royal Opera House, Dresden’s Semperoper offers few opportunities to view its performances on DVD.

We are pleased, then, to screen for members a recent performance of Lohengrin from Dresden with Christian Thielemann conducting the Staatskapelle. It features a cast of some of the most celebrated artists singing today. Anna Netrebco makes her role-debut as Elsa and is joined by the superb Polish tenor Piotr Beczala in the title role. Evelyn Herlitzius, who recently sang Isolde at Bayreuth and will sing Brunnhilde in San Francisco in June, sings Ortrud and is joined by Tomasz Konieczny as Telramund.

Many European productions of Lohengrin in the past years have offered controversial stagings: Bayreuth recently dressed the chorus as rats and even the women’s chorus had long tails; while in Munich the narrative centred around the building of a house for Lohengrin and Elsa.

The Dresden production, however, opts for an excellent, straight forward realisation of Wagner’s libretto. In short, this is a production not to be missed. Time, however, will allow us to screen only the first two acts. We hope to screen the third act at a later date.

Members: $5 visitors: $15