Ingela Brimberg

Gathered at the foot of the rock where Siegfried and Brünnhilde have come together, three Norns weave the fate of the world. Past, present and future are interwoven in their rope; when it breaks unexpectedly, the fates still have one oracle: the twilight of the gods is imminent! Götterdämmerung has more than one ending: Siegfried falls victim to intrigue and to his own innocence, Valhalla goes up in flames, Brünnhilde sacrifices herself to return the ring to the Rhinemaidens. Alliances are forged and immediately broken again, magical potions and helmets create painful confusions, and generational traumas result in general destruction. Everything familiar to humans and gods collapses.

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If in ‘Das Rheingold’ the curtain fell with the hegemony of the gods in Valhalla, the second part of ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ opens with a mortal who, alone on Earth, faces a raging storm. Siegmund is called the hunted warrior, and when he briefly finds peace in a concealed hut, he meets the beautiful but equally hapless Sieglinde. An ardent and natural passion blossoms, but at the same time a hidden past surfaces that will seal their fate.

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Puccini’s last opera is all about riddles. The Emperor of China rules over the Forbidden City of Peking. His unmarried daughter, the Princess Turandot, has refused her hand to all her princely suitors by putting them to a test. She sets them three riddles; if they do not answer them correctly, they will lose their heads. As unlucky suitors fail and fall, up steps Calaf, a prince of the Tatar people. Daniel Kramer’s new staging in Geneva transposes the old fairy tale to a futuristic world where Turandot’s magic holds sway. In a dystopian game show, reminiscent of Hunger Games, the Princess presides over a surveillance state in which men are culled and the reproduction of the human race is conducted in breeding labs.

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Queen Clytemnestra assassinates King Agamemnon. Their daughter, Elektra, lives for the day when her father's death will be avenged. Like a curse, the vendetta must be fulfilled, but is Elektra capable of committing the irreparable? At Grand Théâtre de Genève, the cogs of revenge are set in motion by director Ulrich Rasche, who imprisons the characters of Elektra in a spectacular scenic device: a steel tower weighing almost twelve tons in perpetual rotation. In the pit, conductor Jonathan Nott and his Orchestre de la Suisse Romande confront the musical challenges of Strauss' intoxicating one-act score. The female characters at the centre of the drama are sung by three artists of the highest calibre: Ingela Brimberg as Elektra, Sara Jakubiak as Chrysothemis and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner as Clytemnestra.

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‘In reality, this Lohengrin is an entirely new phenomenon for the modern consciousness!’ Richard Wagner himself understood the innovative character of his sixth piece of music theatre, completed in 1848, the year of revolutions. Although it is reckoned among his ‘romantic operas’, his new vision of musical drama is already clearly heralded in this work. In his hands, the mediaeval saga of the Knight of the Swan becomes a meditation on the true love that asks no questions. Alain Altinoglu, our Music Director, who has already conducted this work in Bayreuth, guarantees the quality of the music, while the director Olivier Py, known at La Monnaie for his brilliant productions of Les Huguenots and Hamlet, can be relied on not to downplay Wagner’s revolutionary political side. Wagner’s own opinion was that ‘one can only understand Lohengrin if one can liberate oneself from any modern-looking, generalising form of representation so as to see the phenomena of real life’. A challenge to us all?

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Spectacular! Opera in three acts. Filmed at a series of outstanding performances at the Teatro Real de Madrid in December 2016, this recording will especially delight lovers of Wagnerian music drama with its faithful reflection of the grandiose staging of Alex Olle, a member of La Fura dels Baus, whose earlier productions have attracted widespread attention. A conductor equally at home in Monteverdi, Boulez, Praetorius and Schumann, Pablo Heras-Casado can rely on a cast totally committed to this breathtaking musical hurricane!

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La Fura dels Baus and Norrlands Operan present a monumental outdoor performance of Richard Strauss’ one- act opera Elektra, staged 2014 at Umeå, Sweden.

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