Rheinsberg for Opera Lovers
Mar. 31st, 2020 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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rheinsbergIllustrious readers, honored guests, with this vid spam, I invite you to the name patron of our community, Rheinsberg, to an evening in the opera (or several). For the palace in which Frederick spent four years - the happiest in his life, he said - and his younger brother Heinrich over 40 - these days in summer hosts a festival for young opera singers. Methinks both brothers with the passion for music would approve. To Cavaradossi's aria from Tosca, have a trailer with wonderful views of the palace:
The other vids beneath the cut offer not one area but excerpts from the various operas performed, but I've also included non-operatic Rhinesberg vids for the opera averse, for this is truly a place to be happy in.
Firstly, here's a short overview from Deutsche Welle - in English - of the palace's history, with a quick tour through it:
Now, checking out the varous vids YouTube offered, I realised that the Rheinsberg festival offers both "Operngalas", which take place in the palace's courtyard and feature performances of several works, and entire performances of the operas, which take place in the garden theatre Heinrich had added. Both are open air.
Here's an overview of the 2015 gala. (All these vids are between 3 and 9 minutes. No entire performances, alas.) Note the countertenor in the middle singing "L'Amour c'est enfant du boheme" from Carmen which made me realize that a male Carmen would be totally Heinrich's type.
Next year, 2015, the Operngala looked like this:
And here's the fabulous Operngala of 2018 (with a bit of thanks saying first, but stick by for the music to come!):
Now, on to the vids featuring the individual performances in the garden theatre. Here's Carmen in 2017 (no countertenor, but female Carmen is fabulous, too):
La Traviata in 2015:
Tosca in 2016:
Les Contes de Hoffmann:
And, especially forcahn, Die Zauberflöte in 2014
Whereas this is amildred_of_midgard special, featuring maps of the place, palace and gardens alike (and no opera):
Lastly, one fantastic overview with no singing, showing Rheinsberg in early autumn with vivid colours, just breathtakingly beautiful:
The other vids beneath the cut offer not one area but excerpts from the various operas performed, but I've also included non-operatic Rhinesberg vids for the opera averse, for this is truly a place to be happy in.
Firstly, here's a short overview from Deutsche Welle - in English - of the palace's history, with a quick tour through it:
Now, checking out the varous vids YouTube offered, I realised that the Rheinsberg festival offers both "Operngalas", which take place in the palace's courtyard and feature performances of several works, and entire performances of the operas, which take place in the garden theatre Heinrich had added. Both are open air.
Here's an overview of the 2015 gala. (All these vids are between 3 and 9 minutes. No entire performances, alas.) Note the countertenor in the middle singing "L'Amour c'est enfant du boheme" from Carmen which made me realize that a male Carmen would be totally Heinrich's type.
Next year, 2015, the Operngala looked like this:
And here's the fabulous Operngala of 2018 (with a bit of thanks saying first, but stick by for the music to come!):
Now, on to the vids featuring the individual performances in the garden theatre. Here's Carmen in 2017 (no countertenor, but female Carmen is fabulous, too):
La Traviata in 2015:
Tosca in 2016:
Les Contes de Hoffmann:
And, especially for
cahn, Die Zauberflöte in 2014Whereas this is a
mildred_of_midgard special, featuring maps of the place, palace and gardens alike (and no opera): Lastly, one fantastic overview with no singing, showing Rheinsberg in early autumn with vivid colours, just breathtakingly beautiful:
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Date: 2020-03-31 12:09 pm (UTC)Hee! You know me so well. Thank you for the videos! They're all beautiful!
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Date: 2020-03-31 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-01 05:48 am (UTC)First: Rheinsberg! You know, this is going to sound really dumb, but I guess I never really thought about it as a real place? I mean, of course it's a real place, that's not what I mean. But a place that is still around (as opposed to a place where royalty lived in the 18th C, and this is dumb because I've been to lots of castles and things in, say, England) and it is gorgeous and I want to go see it now <3
Also as I think you know I discovered our own local young opera artist program a couple of years ago and I think these things are The Best :D these were so much fun!
2015:
-THAT COUNTERTENOR CARMEN, omg. I am still trying to get over that he played violin before he sang and he was good at both (I was at first taken aback that they had a random instrumentalist in the midst of all the opera singers!) I AM SO JEALOUS
-triple traviatas? I found that extremely amusing, actually
For some reason 2016 didn't seem quite as impressive to me, but I think in retrospect that part of this had to do with the sound quality of the recording being different and not the singers. (As individual ones I relaly liked, like "I got plenty of nothin'" (it's hard to sing English!), and the Jewel song) This leads me to --
2015 and 2018
-I do feel it's a little funny to do Don Carlo in concert, like, obviously I ADORE the music but I think I situate it so much in context that I find it hilarious that a guy in a tux is singing it, whereas I don't feel that way about other Verdi, or Mozart, I don't know why!
-2018 is just fabulous! <3
-wowee they got a bunch of opera singers to *sing together* and it didn't sound horrible, probably because they are young :P :D
Carmen: that looks fantastic! (I've only seen Carmen in video once, and this looks much cooler than the one I saw)
La Traviata: you know I love this, but omg what is Violetta WEARING, they are really leaning into this lady of the night thing aren't they. (Also I feel that singers this young have no business singing Verdi but possibly this is me being grumpy)
Tosca: I loved watching this too :D (which is impressive because Puccini is often Not My Thing)
Contes: man this is a weird opera :D I really liked the handwriting sets, and I think French opera is a lot better suited for these voices
Zauberflote: OK, I just loved this, you win. :P :D (I do like stagings where Sarastro totally knows she's got the dagger and sings all that to her anyway <3 )
In conclusion, OK, when we do our group Rheinsberg trip we are going to coordinate it with this opera festival, right?? :D
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Date: 2020-04-01 06:42 am (UTC)THAT COUNTERTENOR CARMEN, omg. I am still trying to get over that he played violin before he sang and he was good at both (I was at first taken aback that they had a random instrumentalist in the midst of all the opera singers!) I AM SO JEALOUS
I was careful not to spoil the violin surprise, since it completely came out of the blue for me, too. :) Inevitably, this makes me now picture this Countertenor Carmen as Mara, the homme fatal of Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling and Heinrich both!
2016 might also suffer from having not as sunny weather, thus influencing the mood?
Carmen: I've seen it once on stage - in Verona, in the Roman arena, no less, which was a fantastic spectacle, but also far away - and the movie version with Julia Migenes in the leading role. And I've seen clips of individual arias by a variety of performers; this is one of my favourites.
Contes: feels always weird to me for meta reasons, since it's about E.T.A. Hoffmann, the writer, who spent five crucial miserable yet creative years in my hometown which why everything there that has anything to do with literature, theatre or music is named after him (Hoffmann having thad that rare double talent of writer & composer - his own opera, Undine, being a case in point; his writings and personality are like Edgar Allen Poe decades before Poe's birth. Given Offenbach otherwise stuck with operetta but wrote this one opera, he must have been a fan.
Zauberflöte: I knew you would. :)
In conclusion, OK, when we do our group Rheinsberg trip we are going to coordinate it with this opera festival, right?? :D
Naturally!
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Date: 2020-04-02 04:38 am (UTC)I was careful not to spoil the violin surprise, since it completely came out of the blue for me, too. :) Inevitably, this makes me now picture this Countertenor Carmen as Mara, the homme fatal of Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling and Heinrich both!
Well done :P :D Ohhhh, okay, this is now my headcanon of Mara :D
That Carmen clip is amazing! Elīna Garanča was already one of my favorites, and wow her Carmen! (And the Met always, or at least often, has such great choreography and videography!) I've got my Met on Demand for a while now; I'm going to have to check it out...
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Date: 2020-04-02 09:49 am (UTC)It's definitely on my list of "day trips from Berlin" for my next Fritz trip. Wust to the west, Rheinsberg to the north, Küstrin to the east. And, um, I admit to having spent far too much time thinking about Rheinsberg as a real place, poring over Google maps and Google images and plotting fic. I even made Royal Patron look at pictures a few months ago, since it lies in his travel future. ;) Since we weren't able to travel together last year, we had some fun doing virtual trips and making plans.
I'm not sure I had seen videos though, so that was a very welcome contribution. And I'm glad there's all this opera for when you're there!
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Date: 2020-04-03 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-04 03:50 am (UTC)(This is still all pipe dreaming for me, my kids need to be rather older before I can jet off halfway across the world :) )
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Date: 2020-04-13 03:23 am (UTC)(I'm jetting off halfway across the world as soon as there's no plague and I've been back at work long enough to not feel guilty about taking a year off for disability and then a month off for Europe. :P)
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Date: 2020-04-04 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 08:43 am (UTC)I think honestly the best part of it is now having a very distinct image of the haunting spectre in question.
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Date: 2020-05-30 09:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 09:14 pm (UTC)The whole thing is beautiful (as the possible panpipes/flute concertos I'm thinking about now that I saw pictures of what the orchestra has with them)