Well, here it is.
THE KURTS!
My theatre winners for Summer 2013.
Some of the decisions as to the winners of
my ‘Awards’ were not very difficult, but some of them were frightfully hard.
Because all the nominees are truly grand performers … and… oh lawks! I sound like a schoolteacher.. . well,
that’s why out of the hundreds of artists I saw, they are there in the list of
loved ones. But when it came to the crunch, and I had to choose among them, I
simply asked myself ‘which one of all these would I most like to see/hear
again?’
OK. Nuff stuff.
First category. Performance in an opera (blokes). One of the nearly dead-heats.
It’s so difficult to compare a performer in a large-stage full production with
someone singing in an operatic concert performance. Or a studio production. The full-stage man has the
advantages of ‘performing’ and also the disadvantages of any ‘production’ that
might be laid upon him.
I’d like to see Andrezej Dobber in a less
eccentric Rigoletto, without a
glitter-frock. His superb singing and acting shone through the handicaps, but
they were handicaps.
So, on my principle ‘what would I like to
see (hear) again’ my winner is (fanfare!)
ROBERTO
TAGLIAVINI for ATTILA
Second category: Performance in an opera (ladies). Again, a mix. One contralto and
two soprani. One virtual musical comedy, one opéra bouffe, one opera that
longed to be bouffe? No melodramatica. Sorry Gruberova. And all the other ovas.
I really and sincerely went overboard for
all these three ladies, and would voyage several kilometres to see any of them
in anything ... but there’s no doubt as to the winner: my quadruple threat
ALEXANDRA
HUTTON for LES CONTES D’HOFFMAN
Right. I don’t know why I put this category
in, but ‘best staging of an opera’. I set myself a task there. By staging, I mean
direction, choreography, sets and costumes. All of them. Together. Well the best often go together. Not
this year.
I’m left with a ‘best direction’ in a
studio, and a dazzling physical production in a large house … so .. on my rules,
this was the result …
DER
FLIGENDE HOLLÄNDER from Basel, at the Staatsoper
Than we come to the section in which I’m
supposed to be the Big Adjudicator. My favourite musical theatre
performance.
(Don’t you think ‘the musical’ is a stupid
ungrammatical term?).
Well, I didn’t see a huge number of such
shows this year, but they ranged from the superb to the ghastly.
I hope Germany will get rid of its
xenophilia, because nearly all the good ones I saw were the home made
ones.
Once again, we’ve got all sizes and types
of stages from the Theater des Westens and the Theater an der Wien to
Biedenkopf and Altenburg.
And again, dead-heat. Almost.
Mdlle van Dam you were as good as Grainne
Renihan or Elaine Paige. But you can’t beat my winner. I went back to see him
four times:
VEIT
SCHÄFEMEIER for TANZ DES VAMPIRES
The ‘my
favourite concert’ was the easiest category to decide. Once again, I
covered large and small, and actually was only disappointed once, but the most
glorious night out was at Radialsystem with the Deutsches Rundfunkchor and
THE
HUMAN REQUIEM
The
Lemon.
Not many lemons this season. The FREISCHÜTZ
was just incomptently done, NATÜRLICH BLONDE looked and sounded like a
hands-down Lemon-winner at the interval, but picked up slightly in Act 2, and
the one ineffectual concert of my season did have some grand music just not
very well performed. But my fourth nominee had hardly one single redeeming
feature. The Lemon goes to
PETER
PAN
And finally, to end on a positive note, a
category which didn’t have nominees. If it’s a lemon for my worst night of the
season, I suppose it has to be an orange for the best.
My favourite theatre night of 2013 …
LES
CONTES DE HOFMANN at the Deutsche Oper
And now we can roll up the red carpet and
put away our diamonds and designer clobber until next year …
1 April 2014 we start all over again …
See you then!
