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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Recorded live at the Bayreuth Festival, August 2011
Hans Neuenfels’s striking new production of Wagner’s fairytale opera gives this medieval story of doomed love and sorcery the Bayreuth treatment. As controversial as it is stimulating, this production was the talk of the 2011 Festival, and showcases a new generation of Wagnerian singing talent including soprano Annette Dasch and tenor Klaus Florian Vogt. Running time: 84 minutes Subtitles: EN/FR/DE/ES Sound format: 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS “If the recording of the live performance had been on CD, I would have been mainly enthusiastic. Andris Nelsons is the most promising Wagner conductor I have heard for a long time, and his account of this glowing, radiant score is broad. The singing is good, too, with a lovely Elsa from Annette Dasch, and a Lohengrin who has magnificent moments.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2012 ** “This is a rather special Lohengrin...the spacious Bayreuth sound is moulded with exceptional tonal refinement and richness of colour...Vogt has more than enough stamina and vocal authority to sustain the role. All six solo singers are musically excellent and dramatically persuasive, with Petra Lang's excoriating Ortrud and Georg Zeppenfeld's grave yet warm-toned King Henry particularly memorable...The general air of conviction owes much to the excellent cinematography” Gramophone Magazine, October 2012 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Recorded live at the Bayreuth Festival, August 2011
Hans Neuenfels’s striking new production of Wagner’s fairytale opera gives this medieval story of doomed love and sorcery the Bayreuth treatment. As controversial as it is stimulating, this production was the talk of the 2011 Festival, and showcases a new generation of Wagnerian singing talent including soprano Annette Dasch and tenor Klaus Florian Vogt. Running time: 84 minutes Subtitles: EN/FR/DE/ES Sound format: 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS “If the recording of the live performance had been on CD, I would have been mainly enthusiastic. Andris Nelsons is the most promising Wagner conductor I have heard for a long time, and his account of this glowing, radiant score is broad. The singing is good, too, with a lovely Elsa from Annette Dasch, and a Lohengrin who has magnificent moments.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2012 ** “This is a rather special Lohengrin...the spacious Bayreuth sound is moulded with exceptional tonal refinement and richness of colour...Vogt has more than enough stamina and vocal authority to sustain the role. All six solo singers are musically excellent and dramatically persuasive, with Petra Lang's excoriating Ortrud and Georg Zeppenfeld's grave yet warm-toned King Henry particularly memorable...The general air of conviction owes much to the excellent cinematography” Gramophone Magazine, October 2012 “In appearance and textual delivery Vogt is ideal, but his sweet, plaintive voice doesn't ring on top...Vogt hasn't an ideal legato style either, but his tenderness is extremely affecting...[Lang is] directed into overacting, but she sigs passionately into the text and for this role has transformed her mezzo into a bright-toned dramatic soprano. Bayreuth's incomparable chorus really deserves a medal for its performance here.” International Record Review, September 2012 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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“Film director Herzog (Fitzcarraldo) creates an atmospheric staging amid glaciers and stone circles. Schneider conducts effectively; Studer, Schnaut and Wlaschiha impress.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2008 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Live from the MET January 10, 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 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Live Recording from The Wiener Staatsoper, 1990
Set Design by RUDOLF and REINHARD HEINRICH Wagner set the action of his “romantic opera” Lohengrin in the “first half of the 10th century” – an instruction which director Wolfgang Weber and his stage designers Rudolf and Reinhard Heinrich clearly took very seriously when they produced it at the Vienna State Opera in 1990. We do indeed experience the early, gloomy Middle Ages: muted colours, dark clouds, barren landscapes and simple shapes dominate the scene. Weber’s simplicity succeeds in evoking clear symbolism; his staging does not impress by means of the spectacular, but underlines the dramatic sense embodied in the music, allowing the outstanding singers full scope to express themselves in this remarkable production under Claudio Abbado. The main roles are taken by Cheryl Studer as Elsa, and Plácido Domingo as Lohengrin – which he first performed as his debut role at the Hamburg State Opera in 1968, at the age of 27. Sound Format: PCM Stereo Picture Format: 4:3 DVD Format: 1 x DVD 5 & 9, NTSC Subtitle Languages: DE (Original Language), GB, FR, IT, ES Running Time: 219 mins FSK: 12 | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
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Jonas Kaufmann’s sensational role debut as Wagner’s Lohengrin was the talk of the 2009 Munich Festival. Filmed in high-def widescreen, Jonas Kaufmann’s bow as Lohengrin is a logical follow-up to the success of his German arias album (4781463), described by Hugh Canning in International Record Review as “one of the vocal records of the year [2009], if not the decade” His sound, a unique combination of torrid sensuality and radiant, crystalline purity, serves a musico-dramatic intelligence that makes a unity of Lohengrin’s often difficult to reconcile heroic and lyric elements. No wonder La Scena Musicale saluted Jonas Kaufmann “. . . the finest Heldentenor since Jon Vickers . . .” Partnered by Anja Harteros – per The Opera Critic, “an exceptional Elsa” – Kaufmann heads a stellar cast conducted by Kent Nagano “Nothing clutters Jones’s focus on the opera’s heart...When Kaufmann’s tenor dips to pianissimo for the Grail narrative, we’re putty in his hands. Physically noble and charismatic, subtly acting and interacting, he’s never a star on a pedestal...Nagano adopts a refreshingly temperate approach, avoiding juggernaut blasts but delighting in details and phrasing.” The Times, 21st May 2010 **** “Richard Jones's and designer Ultz's stage, set in the 1930s, shows an autocratic country where the law is preluded by military fanfares and announced by a single speaker (the Herald). The young cast is led superbly by Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2010 “This is the Lohengrin voice of dreams; both romantic and heroic, with a gentle, well-nourished warmth, capable of a perfectly graduated diminuendo...a major contribution is no doubt made by Kent Nagano's sympathetic conducting and the fine playing of his Munich orchestra.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2010 “Without question, the musical performance is very good, and in the case of the title role, sung by Jonas Kaufmann, I would say it is perfect, and easily the best account of this tricky role I have ever heard. Kaufmann is also noble-looking, handsome and acts with natural grace and conviction...Kent Nagano is the often inspired and at all times fine conductor.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2010 **** | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
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| |  | Recorded live in the Festspielhaus, Baden-Baden in June 2006.
With powerful conviction, Nikolaus Lehnhoff interprets Wagner’s Lohengrin as the dramatic struggle of masculine and feminine, revenge and compassion. Powerfully acted, almost like a Strindberg play, and musically of the highest order, this Lohengrin from the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden will be a benchmark production for decades. With his extraordinarily transparent interpretation of the title role, Klaus Florian Vogt leads an inspired cast to visionary realms that are rarely touched, let alone captured on High Definition film and in pure surround sound. The monumental sets by Stephan Braunfels and Kent Nagano’s sublimely wellbalanced musical interpretation complete a deeply moving totaltheatre experience. Bonus material: Illustrated synopsis & cast gallery. Never Shalt Thou Ask of Me - A documentary film by Reiner E. Moritz, including interviews with Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Stephan Braunfels, Bettina Walter, Kent Nagano and leading members of the cast. 'Whoever believes to already know all nuances of Lohengrin should go to Baden-Baden: soloists, chorus and orchestra are brilliant – and the production leaves barbed afterthoughts in your mind. … There has not been a Lohengrin like Klaus Florian Vogt, the young tenor from Hamburg, for many years…his voice is pure, clean, whiter than snow. Not of this world. Ideal for this role.' Frankfurter Algemeine Note: This Blu-ray Disc (BD) is not compatible with standard DVD players PICTURE FORMAT: 1080i
LENGTH: 279 Mins
SOUND: 2.0 & 5.1 PCM
SUBTITLES: EN/FR/DE/ES/IT
“Nikolaus Lehnhoff's new Lohengrin is a calculated distillation of both the work's dramatic contents and its production history. The hand of his old master Wieland Wagner lies beneficially over the outer acts' terraced ranks of Brabantine courtiers and Saxon soldiers, as it does on the chessboard movements of the principals around a central disc. (The sets here are by the noted German architect Stephan Braunfels, whose recreation of a giant Svoboda staircase for the Act 2 processions is memorable.) The (swanless) appearance and departure of Lohengrin into a thin, central beam of light recall the imagery of Bayreuth's recent Keith Warner/Stefanos Lazaridis staging, while the promotion of Elsa to a constantly onstage narrator/dreamer continues an idea of Götz Friedrich's in an earlier Bayreuth production.
Yet, although Bettina Walter's costumes are modern-ish – somewhere between Juan Carlos's ceremonial Spain and a Hollywood Prisoner of Zenda – Lehnhoff's direction, as always, remains narrative-based and essentially traditional. Only once, in the bridal chamber scene of Act 3 does this director allow himself a conceit, showing Lohengrin, Wagner-like, at a reversed keyboard piano, composing and playing the wedding march. It's a strange and acute image, revealing at a stroke the hero's narcissistic and chauvinistic self-absorption.
Lehnhoff's accumulation of images is trenchantly delivered onstage by his two leading ladies, both wide-ranging, attention-holding actresses: Kringelborn in her vocal prime, strong, pure, never forcing; Meier in her vocal Indian summer, strong, impure, sometimes forcing, but always wholly in the service of this sexy, brainy Ortrud. Vogt, in his silver-blue zoot suit, is a charismatic enigma (hence ideal for this role), an apparently super-light voice but one with both stamina and sustaining power. The lower male voices also make their mark: Fox creates sympathy for this Macbeth without a brain; Trekel's Herald has power and attitude; König is a subtly eponymous, weak liberal Henry. The chorus(es) sound undernourished, acting better than they keep together (in the tricky vocal helter- skelter of Lohengrin's arrival) with the pit. It sounds like early days for Kent Nagano at maintaining pace and flow through the weighty fourin- a-bar recitative-like passages.
Thomas Grimm gets his cameras in close, leaving the singers to track reactions to solo utterances but missing some crucial interplay.
Within a natural sound spectrum, some tweaking has been done to pull out solo lines in ensemble, but the emotions of Lehnhoff's vision ring true and will give pleasure.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 “Elsa remains constantly onstage to narrate and to dream. The cast includes the sexy, brainy Ortrud of Waltraud Meier and the controversially light-toned Klaus Florian Vogt in the title-role.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2010 | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
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| |  | Directed for Stage by Peter Konwitschny and Costumes and Sets by Helmut Brade
Reinhard Hagen (König Heinrich), John Treleaven (Lohengrin), Hans-Joachim Ketelsen (Friedrich von Telramund), Emily Magee (Elsa), Luana DeVol (Ortrud), Robert Bork (Der Heerrufer des Königs) Cor del Gran Teatre del Liceu & Orquestra Simfònica del Gran Teatre del Liceu, Sebastian Weigle Recorded at the Gran Teatre del Liceu , Barcelona, 19 July 2006 “The intimacy and urgency [Peter Konwitschny] conjures simply cannot be described: Opera has never been so literally in-your-face.” Andante “Three-quarters of Peter Konwitschny's Lohengrin plays in a secondary school room… Lohengrin is a pop-star-like saviour greeted with swooning adulation by teddy-bear clutching schoolgirls. Intensely acted, and sung, by all the principals, Konwitschny's approach illuminates and exposes Wagner's contrasting tale of local political squabbles, idealised love, chauvinist behaviour and compromised solutions on every level. ...a vital contemporary staging of the work.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2007 | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
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| |  | Vienna State Opera, 16/5/1965
For a performance of 'Lohengrin' to be completely successful, it depends largely on the evil couple who stand opposed to the Swan Knight and the girl he protects, Elsa. The 1965 production at the Vienna State Opera was acclaimed for its musical aspects, and on its opening night Christa Ludwig as Ortrud made evident why Wagner himself described this character as “terribly magnificent”. Christa Ludwig celebrates her 85th birthday on 16 March 2013, and with her interpretation of roles such as this she secured for herself a place in the annals of the Vienna State Opera. Her curse ('Entweihte Götter!') was accorded spontaneous ovations by the audience and the subtlety that she brings to this role, straddling as it does the range of a dramatic soprano and a dramatic mezzo, makes this sorceress the undisputed manipulator of the action. All this can be heard clearly, on this live recording. With the dramatic baritone Walter Berry as Telramund, she had a partner on that evening whose vocal power was hitherto largely unsuspected, yet who offered no less vocal sophistication. Overall, the performance on that evening was stormier and more agitated than many a more 'ethereal', enraptured version such as one often hears. It was driven by Karl Böhm at the helm of the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, and with a State Opera Chorus that had been excellently prepared by Wilhelm Pitz. Eberhard Waechter as the Herold and Martti Talvela as King Heinrich were powerfully resplendent, while Claire Watson as Elsa and Jess Thomas as the title hero formed the 'good' couple, rounding off this superb cast with their bright tone colours. Her voice, schooled in Mozart, was slender and clear in focus, while his virile tenor, clear in accentuation and in diction, offered a model of the Wagner style of the 1960s that also dominated in Bayreuth: as was preferred by the director, Wieland Wagner. This 'Lohengrin' offered a modern reading in the best sense of the word, allowing the characters their mythical grandeur while at the same time letting them approach the contemporary audience as men and women of flesh and blood. “Claire Watson excels her studio performances, singing Elsa with floods of pure tone that rarely falters...[Ludwig's] 'Entweihte Götter!' literally stops the show...Waechter makes a keen Herald, and the chorus is on good form...manna for Böhm admirers.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2013 **** | 
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The latest release in this unique Wagner edition. Previously, Parsifal was BBC Music Magazine’s recording of the Month; “… spontaneity of something which has sunk so deeply into the performers’ minds and souls that they can throw caution to the wind.” “The shimmering “holy” textures of [the Act I prelude is] evidence of the sonorous string culture of this Berlin band, as remarkable as that of its Rattle- and Barenboim-led rivals. Janowski is a master Wagnerian, but his swift tempi and propulsive momentum are the antithesis of Barenboim’s more spacious Wagner.” Sunday Times, 15th July 2012 “As early as the Prelude the quality of the audio shines: the separation of the strings is spotless and crystal-clear...the music, as it should, shimmers in mid air. And so it goes throughout the performance...[Vogt’s] singing is outstandingly beautiful and sensitive, and you get used to the small-but-gleaming sound after a while...Lohengrin is supposed to be otherworldy, and Vogt’s sound certainly is.” Classics Today “Janowski has matured into the most reliably impressive Wagner conductor of our time...[Vogt] has a lovely voice, though it occasionally sounds thin; but he is expressive, intelligent and convincing. So is his Elsa, soprano Annette Dasch. The villains match them, especially mezzo-soprano Susanne Resmark as Ortrud, who calls on the pagan gods with thrilling panache...I await the rest of the Pentatone series with impatience.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2012 ***** “This is a Lohengrin to be listened to in Bruckner mode: revel in the sound of chorus and orchestra and put up with the voices, though I am sure some will react differently to Vogt's Lohengrin.” International Record Review, September 2012 “[Dasch] is the ne plus ultra in slim-sounding, girlish Elsas. But it sounds and works so beautifully...[Vogt's] understanding of the part triumphs, there is much lovely quieter singing and he is able to bring special atmosphere to the Grail narration...Resmark is pushed at times by the tessitura...but gives such a firecracker Ortrud that no one should care...There's a terrifyingly long list of worthwhile Lohengrin recordings, to which this newcomer is a serious competitor” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2012  BBC Music Magazine
Opera Choice - October 2012 |
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Gramophone Awards 2010
Gramophone Magazine