Good post today from Dan Conover on the P&C’s Spoletoblog. He’s got a point: Die Vögel, which is by all accounts an excellent opera that’d be getting huge press in any other year, is, strangely, the subject of about as much chatter as another Paris Hilton sex video.
The loser in the buzz-game so far has got to be Die Voegel, which is, by all accounts, an excellent production. Here’s what our William Furtwangler had to say about the May 27 premiere: The “musically and visually stunning American premiere performance of Walter Braunfels’ ‘Die Voegel’ excited and inspired the Sottile Theatre audience. With astonishing singing and dazzling staging, this long-lost work even now electrifies…”
So how does something with those qualifications go so unremarked in the first week? There can be little argument that the most talked-about performances so far have been La bella dormente, DollHouse and the Big Buzz Champ, Don Giovanni. Die Voegel has been slogging along somewhere in the middle of the bell curve, much respected but almost forgotten. I hear more chatter about Charles Wadsworth’s most recent quips than I hear about Die Voegel.
One reason may be its scheduling:Voegel hasn’t been performed since opening night of the festival, and tonight’s second performance is up against Kingdom of Desire, which is sucking so much of the oxygen out of the room. Compare that to La bella dormente (three performances) and Don Giovanni (two).
I’m seeing it on Saturday, so you can at least be assured of reading more about it then.