Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Amazing that no one has ever written a commentary on this performance, even in its VHS format. Superb performance all around. It is difficult to single out anyone person because they are all good to outstanding. In my bias, I do single out Rysanek, whose "Orturd" is overwhelmingly sung and conceived. Her radiant voice fills out a great acting performance. The Met orchetra is equally outstanding. I am grateful that we have Rysanek in a live from the Met performance. She recorded little. They claim her voice was difficult to record (LP or Cd). Here she is the legend she already had become. She stated in her own words that she was not always satisfied with her recordings, although the RCA album of Italian arias did get her ok. Rysanek caught live surpasses Rysanek recorded in the studio. Live she was exciting and riviting. Her Chrysothemis is also available on a live from the Met with Nilsson as Elektra and Mignon Dunne as Clytemestra. That performance had the Met audience on its feet for nearly a hour hour at the curtains' fall. That, like this Lohengrin, is absolutely a "must have". Marton is caught in beautiful voice before its lamentable decline. Roar is an effective Telramund, never coarse of voice and Hofmann is the least stunning of the cast and he sings well and makes a very believable presence. So this gives you some idea of what you are in for. I'm been trying for many months (close to a year) to find this dvd format as I had it on VHS. It deserves to be a best seller along with the Elektra. Opera on dvd doesn't come along that often with this calabre of prodction, - No Euro-trash here - singing and overall excellence. Grab them while you can. Superb theater, great singing, outstanding orchestra playing. Wagner, Srauss and Rysanek must be very happy with this unequaled success.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Wagner - Lohengrin / James Levine, The Metropolitan Opera (1986)
The Met brought out its best available performers... James Levine...controls the music superbly and...brings out a texture of sound in which Wagnerian sensualists can simply wallow." Washington Post The medieval romance of the Swan Knight, who comes miraculously to the rescue of the falsely accused Elsa of Brabant, became on of Richard Wagner's most beloved operas. Enacted against a background of chivalric and religious pageantry and made vivid by Wagner's powerful, richly scored music, Lohengrin comes grippingly to life in this handsome Metropolitan Opera production, featuring a notable cast under the baton of Artistic Director James Levine. Peter Davis in New York praised Leoni Rysanek's Ortrud, "an especially fascinating creation," and Eva Marton's "creamy-voiced Elsa, "while Mary Cambell of the Associated press declared Peter Hoffman "a splendid Lohengrin.
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