Soprano Alexandra LoBianco has excelled at Seattle Opera in recent years as Aïda and Tosca, and her voice in concert was lovely, but to my ears, she didn't sound like Brünnhilde the Valkyrie some vocal heft was missing. Eric Owens is one of the best bass-baritones around, but he sounded slightly underpowered as Wotan (possibly the fault of the microphone). The most exciting, beautiful vocal performances were also those of tenor Brandon Jovanovich as Siegmund and soprano Angela Meade as Sieglinde. The main characters of Die Walküre are Brünnhilde and her father, Wotan, but cuts (admittedly necessary for the concert format) decreased their roles and showcased instead Siegmund and Sieglinde, the long-separated twins who fall in love in Act I. Of course that was impossible at Fisher Plaza, but the singers stood several feet back from the microphones, and top-notch sound designed by Robertson Witmer made for a decent outcome. One of the thrills of attending an opera performance is the experience of receiving a singer's voice directly into one's ears, unmediated. Opera singers normally sing without microphones in fact, their voices sound best when unamplified. The wind rattled the microphones and fuzzed the music at times, but Morlot and these excellent musicians cannot be held responsible for that. The rich texture of Wagner's music was all there, but the sound was never muddy. Ludovic Morlot, conducting a Wagner opera for the first time, led Seattle Symphony musicians in an orchestral performance of rare clarity and expressiveness. The concert itself was the best possible, considering the difficult circumstances. Before the concert, parents pushed strollers, family groups shared the contents of picnic baskets, and a rooftop beer garden added to the merriment. Although people were not crowded together, Fisher Plaza looked and felt full. The atmosphere was festive and celebratory, with many audience members wearing paper winged hats to represent the Valkyries or colorful T-shirts acquired at past productions of Wagner's Ring Cycle.
The audience was masked, distractions abounded, and essential parts of the drama were cut.īut damn, it felt good to be part of an opera audience again. However, this week's Welcome Back Concert - an abridged, amplified, minimally staged Die Walküre performed outdoors at Seattle Center - reminded opera lovers of what we've been missing: the joy of live performance. James Cathedral) were particularly vivid and satisfying to experience at home. The two most recent of those productions ( Flight, filmed primarily in the Museum of Flight, and Tosca, filmed at St. Under the leadership of General Director Christina Scheppelmann, the company managed to produce digital versions of all operas planned for the 2020-21 season. BY RICHARD WAGNER (ABRIDGED BY SEATTLE OPERA)ĭuring the year and a half since the onset of the pandemic, Seattle Opera has done a remarkable job of creating productions designed to be filmed, with plenty of physical distance between singers.
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