Wagner: Lohengrin / Seiffert, Maggie, Polaski, Struckmann, Pape, Trekel, Barenboim
Lohengrinhas a reputation as Wagner's most accessible, grandly romantic opera. It is arguably his saddest as well, reflecting an irreconcilable conflict between the utopian and the actual. Daniel Barenboim once again proves himself among the most astute of today's Wagnerians by tapping into this opera's uniqueness. He avoids the reductive temptation to presentLohengrinmerely as a backward glance at the composer's musical roots or as a premonition of the mature music dramas to follow. In fact, there is room for both in the flowing, often brisk tempi favored by Barenboim and in his ripe attention to orchestral color (note how hypnotic are the sinister shadings evinced in the Act II prelude). This set moreover offers the complete, uncut score (including the rarely heard second part of the Act III Grail narration). Peter Seiffert is superb as the swan knight, with an evenly focused, expressive, powerful tenor and radiant high A's; he projects a core of irremediable loneliness that shows deep sympathy with Wagner's vision in this work. Emily Magee portrays a far less satisfactory Elsa, her phrasing too wooden and undifferentiated--and too close in timbre to her nemesis, Ortrud, given here a menacing, Lady Macbeth-like intensity by Deborah Polaski. Falk Struckmann is rock solid, if not as psychologically riveting, as her husband, Telramund; their scene together in Act II is one of the set's hair-raising highlights. Roman Trekel makes an unusually memorable impression as the stentorian herald, and there's a hint of King Marke in Rene Pape's rather wise but perplexed Heinrich. Aside from some passages of surprising listlessness (notably the Act III prelude), the Berlin Staatsoper Orchestra plays with warmth and dramatic urgency. Given the cast shortcomings, this version does not displaceKempe's superlative account, but it makes a significant addition to the catalog.--Thomas May