Word: siemssen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...phantasmagorical spirit of E.T.A. Hoffmann lurks everywhere in the Metropolitan Opera's brilliant new production of Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann), which opened last week. Vividly directed by Otto Schenk and imaginatively designed by Günther Schneider-Siemssen, Hoffmann is the Met's most successful, satisfying effort in months. It is all the more welcome because the season, still somewhat colored by 1980's labor disputes, began in a lackluster fashion. Soprano Renata Scotto was booed in her opening-night performance of Norma, and a Ring semicycle...
...production is the work of two Austrians, Stage Director Otto Schenk and Set Designer Günther Schneider-Siemssen. Schenk treated the story simply and with his designer's help has placed it against handsome, mood-filled back drops. The inside of Venus' home, for example, is a steadily shifting vision of pools, waterfalls, trysting places and writhing bodies. Much of its look is achieved with rear projections on a curved, cyclorama-type screen. The dissolution of Venusberg as Tannhäuser is expelled is both swift and wizardry...
...hands of the designers. These days no one really expects Fricka to ride on in a chariot drawn by rams, but why sacrifice the whole idea of the Valkyries as warriors? Shields and spears are banished from this Valhalla (directed by Wolfgang Weber and designed by Giinther Schneider-Siemssen). Maybe the old helmets were corny, but they were no worse than the dated bouffant coiffes the maidens now wear, not to speak of the evening gowns, complete with sequins and bugle beads. The nine mighty young immortals lack only evening purses to pass for the gaudier members of the audience...
...latest to try. Director August Everding and Designer Giinther Schneider-Siemssen, are no exception. Their new Tristan und Isolde, which opened at the Met last week, undoubtedly will provoke arguments for as long as the production runs. To some, it may be a bold realization of the poetry in Wagner's libretto. To others, it will seem more like the further adventures of Mary Poppins, German style...
...minutely supervised the spare, expressionistic sets designed by German-born Günther Schneider-Siemssen, a longtime Von Karajan protégé. The extraordinary lighting design, ranging for the most part from grey to basic black, was Von Karajan's own. The cast was handpicked, and the hand was his. He guided the Met's orchestra through what amounted to a graduate seminar on Wagnerian sonority, galvanizing that frequently scraggly ensemble into a pliant, rich tonal fabric...