Wagner - Rienzi (Bayreuth, 2026)

Richard Wagner - Rienzi (Bayreuth, 2026)

Bayreuther Festspiele, 2026

Nathalie Stutzmann, Alexandra Szemerédy, Magdolna Parditka, Andreas Schager, Gabriela Scherer, Andreas Bauer Kanabas, Jennifer Holloway, Michael Nagy, Vitalij Kowaljow, Matthias Stier, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Victoria Randem

BR-Klassik Livestream - 26th July 2026

First performed in 1842, Wagner's first serious opera Rienzi, der letzte der Tribunen had never been performed before at the composer's theatre at Bayreuth. A five-act epic in the grand opera tradition, it was soon disavowed by the composer and never accepted as part of the Bayreuth canon. It has been performed infrequently elsewhere, but it is a challenge, the opera carrying a lot of historical baggage and notoriety as an opera that celebrates fascism and its association with the Third Reich. The idea that an opera can be fascist is clearly nonsense of course - it's all about how you choose to represent the rise and fall of a dictator on the stage. Some might choose to confront this legacy but another approach - surely equally as valid if it has any meaning or relevance at all (the jury may still be out on that one) - is to see the opera not defined by history, but what it means today.

The Bayreuth Festival has not been afraid to confront Wagner's history and some of the controversial elements in his works, but it has tended to shy away from making any overly political statements in recent years. Stefan Herheim's Parsifal at Bayreuth however viewed the composer's last great work in the context of German history, while the most recent challenge to the composer's legacy was Barry Kosky putting Wagner's antisemitism on trial in the 2017 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Having never been performed before at Bayreuth however, the pressure on the directors to find a way of presenting this troublesome work are undoubtedly considerable, but just as important is validating the staging of the Rienzi at Bayreuth in its 150th anniversary year is also to come up with a meaningful approach that will address the question of why now?

It's immediately apparent that if the directors Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka are going to address the legacy of Rienzi, it is going to be through the lens of the present rather than through its Nazi associations or indeed its 14th century historical drama in Rome. The famous overture - one of the enduring qualities of the work - sets a scene across three rooms of a contemporary apartment block are occupied by Cola Rienzi, his sister Irene and a young sick child who we discover is Rienzi's brother Giovanni. 'Party Chairman' Rienzi is preparing a speech venerating German Art while Irene is looking after the sick child. The child dies and as the building rises out of the stage, the neighbouring apartments are seen sharing text messages suggesting an incestuous relationship between Rienzi and his sister, and that the child may have been born out of that relationship.

Act I's clashes between the Colonna and Orsini families here take the form of a heated election debate, with graphics showing election polls and projections, TV cameras broadcasting the election addresses and debates. Talk around Rienzi isn't the only scandal doing the rounds, as Stefano Colonna, an important industrialist, has recently been acquitted of the hit-and-run accident that has led to the death of Giovanni. Rienzi steps in to bring a measured response that strikes a chord with the public and the media, pledging loyalty to Irene and Adriano Colonna, the son of Stefano to serve the people.

Despite the overheated nature of the first Act - somewhat inevitable considering Wagner's dramatic score - its is relatively based in a familiar contemporary reality that soon breaks down, or at least shows a deeper more troubling undercurrent. Having been acclaimed Tribune of Rome, the dull grey and white of Act I is momentarily replaced with a new optimism and pride in the new Rome under the command of Rienzi. But as the sun breaks through the storm clouds in this production's Act II, in Rienzi's mind his dead brother appears as one of the divine Messengers of Peace descending staircase from heaven. Scenes for Rienzi’s reception or "coronation" take place in a Roman senate arrangement where after the failed Caesar-like assassination attempt and coup by Colonna, Rienzi takes on a Christ complex.

Despite the modern trappings - mobile phones held aloft at every move - the Bayreuth production nonetheless adheres closely to the dramatic action as it plays out in the libretto without too many revisionist touches, but also without managing to say anything new about what follows. The contemporary setting at least has a ring of familiarity to it as, for all the ruler's fine words, the real test comes when the 'nobili' - or businesses and wealth holders - rise up against him. Needless to say, Rienzi fails here and it's the ordinary people who pay the price of the cost of war, resulting in the people turning against him. Even though 'modernised', Rienzi resists modernisation, Act III remains every bit as over the top as the most extravagant of grand opera, the production failing to rein its excesses in at all.

Whether a director should even attempt to hold back on Rienzi or not is of course a matter of choice. Wagner scored the work to be a grand, epic statement, but it does risk losing sight of any purpose it might have, getting carried away in its own operatic grandiosity, with caricatures of noble sentiments and foul plots, all arch declamations, formal processions, marching battle-hymns and fervent solemn choruses. It's similarly easy for the audience to just get caught up in the grand sweep of it all to the extent that they ignore the troubling undercurrents of fascism, but at this kind of drawn-out length (even in its reduced form of just under 4 hours), it's also rather wearying.

Although I have seen it a few times, I'm not as familiar with Rienzi as other Wagner operas, but it does seem as if there has been some reordering done to make it flow a little easier. Rienzi sings his Act V aria 'Allmächt'ger Vater' before Act IV's discussion of excommunication (a fair portion of which is conducted through text messages in English), but otherwise under conductor Nathalie Stutzmann, it's the full-on Rienzi experience. Some other unique directorial touches are applied to Act V where Rienzi and Irene seem to consummate their relationship in some kind of death pact while Adriano looks on in shock. The only light touch - or heavy-handed touch maybe - is the use of the Act II ballet music to run through highly compressed scenes from all Wagner's subsequent mature operas, performed in am dram costumes, complete with intervals where the well-heeled audience queue for drinks and toilets.

To be honest, the ballet-theatre scene is indicative of the style of the acting and the direction throughout. There is a token attempt to explore the psychology or psychopathy of a dictator in a proposed invented incestuous relationship with sister and death of his brother (or 'brother’), which doesn't offer a great deal - although it is something of a Wagnerian trait. There is also at least some effort to engage with contemporary political events in the production - perhaps more so than any production at Bayreuth since Frank Castorf's Ring - setting the work in the context of a modern electoral campaign where the far-right are gaining popular votes. The epic grand conclusion that Wagner scores could only be justified when depicted as the eventual complete meltdown of the capitalist system, but it all just feels empty and meaningless after fours at full tilt orchestration and booming choruses, and the work proves resistant to any attempt to inject an air of cautionary realism into it.

Vocally, aside from the chorus who have an important part to play in this work, much rests inevitably on Andreas Schager's performance as Rienzi and, as is often the case, it's a little over the top (as is the chorus, but in a good way). Certainly the role is written for grand declamation, but Schager doesn't seem to be able to bring it down to any level other than full-on forte that starts loud and gets increasingly strained over the four hours of the opera. The man is going to do himself an injury at this rate. Only when taking the 'Allmächt'ger Vater' aria - presumably placed in Act IV for breathing space - does he manage to show some restraint; in the singing at least; the 'acting' is reduced to lots of wild expressions and writhing around. Sure, the relentless pitch of the opera perhaps demands it, but Schager's performance doesn't make it any easier to relate to it. I liked Gabriela Scherer's performance as Irene, even though her role in the opera remains unfathomable in the psychodrama that is developed here with Rienzi and Adriano. Jennifer Holloway's Adriano is a heroic role that proves powerless to change the course of events; the soprano makes similarly a valiant effort all the way through, but is often overwhelmed by the bombast.

The current rise of the far-right in Germany is all the justification necessary to bring Rienzi to the stage at Bayreuth - let's just hope that the AFD don't adopt the overture for its rallies or history might repeat itself - but if that is indeed the target, it fails to make its mark and just confirms that Rienzi does not need to remain a regular fixture at Bayreuth. Despite the derivativeness of its sources though, it is an accomplished work, worth a look every now and again to admire not so much its sheer folly and ambition, but to see it as a necessary step towards the greatness that would follow from Richard Wagner. It's almost as if all the bad habits of operatic grand opera had to be expelled from the system in order to find his own true voice. This Rienzi is worth seeing, even if it's just to get over the curiosity about whether it really has any merit, and you can put any such ideas about that aside for another while.

BR-Klassik Livestream, Bayreuther Festspiele

Tchaikovsky - The Queen of Spades (Brussels, 2022)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Pikovaya Dama

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2022

Nathalie Stutzmann, David Marton, Dmitry Golovnin, Laurent Naouri, Jacques Imbrailo, Anne Sofie von Otter, Anna Nechaeva, Charlotte Hellekant, Alexander Kravets, Mischa Schelomianski, Maxime Melnik, Justin Hopkins, Mireille Capelle, Emma Posman

OperaVision - 23 September 2022

Although visually it clearly takes place in late Soviet-era USSR, everyone wearing 1970s' costumes in the courtyard exterior and assumed interiors of a Soviet tenement block, it is of course tempting to see something of the current conflict in Ukraine in David Marton's 2022 production of Tchaikovsky's Pikovaya Dama/The Queen of Spades for La Monnaie, the production playing out much at the same time in September 2022 as the Russian invasion was at its height. While the period sets it apart and prevents it from making any ill-fitting and facile commentary on a serious and complex contemporary situation, Tchaikovsky's opera and indeed Pushkin's original ghost story do have something to say about the dangers of myths fuelling nationalistic delusions and war.

That's touched on in the children's chorus of the opening scene which otherwise has apparently little to do with the opera, a scene that would be difficult to imagine playing straight in the current circumstances and an example of how quickly 'innocent' intent can suddenly appear more sinister as times change. With this chorus of schoolboys lining up in a play-acted military march against Russia's enemies, Tchaikovsky could easily be outlawed (and has indeed been in some places) in the current climate where Russian artists and musicians are now viewed with suspicion. Marton however turns this into a more abstract scene, a Russian pianist centre stage, a radio playing the marching song, while a group of mothers listen to the broadcast of their sons with horror for what lies ahead.

It neatly sidesteps any controversy, not that La Monnaie ever work on the basis of playing safe in their productions, but it also sets the tone for what follows. The period and setting emphasise the divide between the rich and the poor, Liza the prize of the Prince that Hermann, hanging out with his chums in the tenement block, gambling, spending his money on black market goods, cannot hope to win. He knows he is a loser, not just in cards but in the game of life, and he feels that despair deeply, in the way that only the tragic figures of Russian literature can. And in a way that only a composer like Tchaikovsky, it his own troubled personal life, can put into music - as demonstrated in Stefan Herheim's 2016 production of this opera.

A creative director can of course delve into many different layers of this work, as Hans Neuenfels also did at Salzburg, using the children's march as a means of emphasising the strict rules of society that Hermann feels he has the right to place himself outside. What gives him the confidence to follow his own path in Marton's production is, like the empowerment of nationalistic exceptionalism expressed in the march, the lie of the myth of the Countess and the three cards that he chooses to believe in. He buys into it, but also buys a gun from a black market dealer to give him a little more power and influence. 

Marton of course doesn't keep it as simple as that and recognises the complexity of Tchaikovsky's music and the fact that art, opera and music have their part to play in exposing or examining the workings of the human mind, and indeed inspiring to go to war. Throughout the opera we see a man writing in a book, a libretto perhaps, and a pianist at the centre of the scene, Marton resisting however the temptation to go down Herheim's use of a Tchaikovsky doppelganger (or many of them, reflecting various sides of the composer). The two come together at the conclusion of the opera to reflect what they have experienced in the preceding episodes.

But art has other means and uses, particularly for ordinary people in the impoverished circumstances depicted in this era and this is also reflected in the setting. While the men are gambling, black market dealing or finding other ways of escape through alcohol, the women are seen looking to escape their surroundings, reading books, gazing into a glass of spirits, trying to catch a radio signal from the outside world. A young girl gazes at a globe, and Polina sings a melancholic song that observes: "What did I find in those enchanting dreams? A grave." Such scenes, as well as Tchaikovsky's pastorale and the arrival of Catherine the Great would feel out of place in this context, a divertissement in the middle of the near-contemporary realism depicted here, but it actually serves as another illusion to keep the peasants dreaming.

With a wealth of such material already provided by Tchaikovsky for a good director to use purposefully, there is no need then to bring any current conflict - which would certainly have been imminent during rehearsals - into the production. It's enough to perhaps just reference it to avoid any controversy of performing a Russian composer and let the opera deliver its own commentary on it, which it does most powerfully by taking things to their inevitable conclusion. Hermann is afflicted by madness to his 'cause', believing the words of an old woman on a payphone as if they are speaking a secret message to him. It means ruin and death and that is all that is left for Liza too. Dragged to her death by the same delusions of escape that had given her comfort.

Christian Friedländer set designs pitch the production into this ambiguous and divided world, somewhere between brutalism and romantic fantasy. The tenement block is stark enough to capture the romanticised view of the opera's ghost story running up against the harsh reality of ordinary people's lives, the contrasts of riches (or dreams of riches), with the impoverishment of their lives. Using the period, contrasting costumes of the real and the imagined, turning reality into art through the dreams of the secondary characters and chorus, in its own way it creates a visual representation of what opera does when art meets reality.

Conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann it's a strong musical performance, the orchestra delivering the high drama, matching the subtleties of Tchaikovsky's score to the underlying romantic sentiments and mad delusions. The singing performances are also a good fit for the roles, for the attack of the music and the intent of the stage direction. The Russian principals are excellent in this capacity, Dmitry Golovnin as Hermann and Anna Nechaeva as Liza both impassioned in their own ways. Jacques Imbrailo is fine as the Prince as is Anne Sofie von Otter, now at that stage in her career where she has the personality and character to take on the role of the Countess. There is good work also from the supporting roles and the chorus. It's not a classic production but one that is necessarily connected to a view of the times we are living under, a time of madness and a reminder that the only thing we can be sure of is death.

Links: La Monnaie streaming, OperaVision

Wagner - Tannhäuser (Monte-Carlo, 2017)

Richard Wagner - Tannhäuser

L'Opéra de Monte-Carlo - 2017

Nathalie Stutzmann, Jean-Louis Grinda, José Cura, Steven Humes, Annemarie Kremer, Aude Extrémo, Jean-François Lapointe, William Joyner, Roger Joakim, Gijs van der Linden, Chul-Jun Kim, Anaïs Constans

Culturebox - February 2017

The failure and the uproar caused by the first French performances of Wagner's Tannhäuser in Paris in 1861 is one of the most significant events in musical history. Wagner's new way of structuring and writing opera with through-composition was certainly viewed as a challenge to the unwritten rules of opera; rules that were strictly observed at the Paris Opera. Those rules may have had more to do with social conventions than musical ones - upsetting the dinner arrangements of the influential Jockey Club members - but Wagner's musical innovations were significant and the work at least made a strong impression despite and maybe even because of the notoriety of the perceived fiasco in Paris.

Wagner had in fact tailored his opera specifically for the French audiences at its Paris premiere, even going as far as including the obligatory ballet sequence - albeit not placed in the conventional running order. The ballet and some of the other revisions are occasionally still introduced into productions of the opera, but it's very rare that you have the opportunity to see the work performed in the French language translation that was given at in its brief three night run in Paris in 1861. It's of considerable interest then to see this rare French version of Tannhäuser revived for the Monte-Carlo Opera.

The difference the French language makes to Tannhäuser is immediately striking, if not really all that surprising. It's not really all that immediately obvious though, since in addition to the long Vorspiel, Wagner's controversially placed ballet also follows the choral Bacchanal, which means that it's a full 25 minutes before you get to hear the voice of Heinrich, or Henri as he is known in this version. And credit to José Cura, who brings his robust dramatic lyrical tenor to the role with a fluid line if not with perfect enunciation, but it's the fact that the role is sung in French that is so striking, making Tannhäuser sound almost entirely different from the more familiar German version.

As you might expect, the work has a softer, lyrical flow in French, and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann emphasises this lighter treatment with a more delicate touch. It really doesn't sound at all like the Wagner we are more familiar with, nor does it really sound like anything that we could find comparable in French opera. It's not at all like Massenet, Saint-Säens nor any of the early adopters or admirers of Wagner's methods, although only Chausson really ever attempted anything in French opera that showed overt influence. What the French version does highlight however is something closer to what Wagner himself would have been aiming for at the time of composition; something that draws from the extravagance and style of the French Grand Opéra but has a uniquely German expression. That makes it sound totally unique in that respect, and in this version you can really see why the work would have come as a shock to a conservative French audience.

Consequently, the French Tannhäuser requires a different type of singer, and that does seem to be the biggest challenge faced by the Monte-Carlo production. José Cura copes best, showing that the role of Henri requires a more lyrical Saint-Säens style tenor than it does a Heinrich Heldentenor. Even then, the French language doesn't always scan well over the long Wagnerian lines and this certainly presents problems for some of the other roles. The role of Vénus is more of a mezzo-soprano role in the French version, and it is sung well by Aude Extrémo. Élisabeth is more of a challenge, and it certainly pushes Annemarie Kremer to her limits. Steven Humes comes over well as Hermann, the Landgrave, and the Monte Carlo production also has a good Wolfram in Jean-François Lapointe, who gives a lovely rendition of 'Ô douce etoile, feu du soir' (O, du mein holder Abendstern), but Tannhäuser/Wagner is undoubtedly a challenge for the French voice. The chorus is outstanding.

Jean-Louis Grinda's production makes effective use of Laurent Castaingt's visually impressive set designs. There's an extravagance of colouration in Act I which matches the vaguely 1940s period costumes with a Powell and Pressburger like Technicolor staging. In a stage context it looks more like more the stylised designs of 'The Red Shoes' or 'Tales of Hoffmann', but it also manages to capture something of the feel of 'Colonel Blimp' or the ecstatic colour sections of 'A Matter of Life and Death'. Act I's Venusberg is extraordinary, a hallucinogenic blaze of colour and psychedelic projections that would be appropriate for Henri's indulgence in this den of sin here being more of the narcotic kind. That also suits the slighter lighter touch that takes an edge off Wagner's rather more heavy-handed social and religious moralising.

Henri's act of rebellion nonetheless still contrasts strongly with the elegant clean lines and formal dress of Act II's scenes in Wartburg. The singing contest takes place in a cathedral-like dome where a grail is ceremoniously placed centre stage. During Henri's act of rebellion, scandalising polite society with profane art that is in defiance of social niceties and musical conventions, four representations of Venus remain present, visible only to Tannhäuser. They are easily upset these fine upstanding citizens, but then so too were the original first audience at the Paris Opera, we have to remember. One can only imagine that, despite the apparent failure of the work in Paris, Wagner must have delighted that the provocation of his own act of rebellion would make him the talk of the town.

Quite what kind of acceptance that the apostate expects to find is always difficult to reconcile in Act III of Tannhäuser, and it's by no means clear what way director Jean-Louis Grinda intends to present it, other than that it is still visually arresting. In a kind of inverted world, trees hang down from the sky, while Henri appears to be walking on the clouds of heaven, while the sun rises above/below the clouds and an eye appears in the sky. Henri's salvation at the end appears to be a heavenly one only, the penitent chorus appearing over the curve rise of the stage proclaiming the miracle of the flowering staff, while Henri faces down the guns of his rivals as the last notes ring out. Heaven and eternal peace ("À lui le ciel et la paix eternelle") may be the due of the penitent sinner, but in this production there's apparently not much earthly forgiveness being offered.

Links: L'Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Culturebox