Arnold Schoenberg: Gurrelieder – Dutch National Opera

   in Opera Now (Feb, 2017)
Next on my list is a fascinating attempt to stage Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder for the first time, by Pierre Audi in Amsterdam (filmed 2014). For this monumental cantata, Audi draws in multiple historical strands to present the work as a dramatic entity. He sets it in a massive and gloomy galleried hall, where Waldemar (tenor) and his mistress Tove (soprano) sing their many songs in Part I almost as an extended metaphysical duet, reminiscent of Tristan und Isolde. Visually there is an air of decayed grandeur which intensifies as the music approaches its third and final part, echoing the period between 1900 and 1913, during which Schoenberg composed the piece, …