• by Richard Wagner
• In German with projected English translations

• Approximate Running Time: 4 hours, 27 minutes

Destined to be one of the musical events of the season.

With its breathtaking, majestic music, here is Wagner's glorious romantic epic in the landmark Covent Garden production.

A young noblewoman, falsely accused of murdering her brother, dreams of being rescued — and miraculously, her knight in shining armor appears. He is Lohengrin, who pledges to marry her and save her homeland from invaders. But she must love him unconditionally, and never ask his name or origin. Tall order — especially with two forces of evil plotting against her.

Is Lohengrin the savior of the downtrodden…or seeking redemption himself? Laden with symbolism, this masterwork abounds with dramatic scenes — including the iconic Wedding March!

Wagnerian superstars join forces with Sir Andrew Davis and our magnificent Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

"Tonal splendor"..."youthful passion"..."heldentenor prowess to spare"...critics everywhere agree that today's leading Lohengrin is Johan Botha.

As Elsa, Emily Magee is "superb...giving us soaring, gleaming high notes and unending vocal power." Opera News

NEW PRODUCTION

Lyric Opera presentation generously made possible by two Anonymous Donors, Mrs. A. Watson Armour, Marlys A. Beider, Mr. & Mrs. Dietrich M. Gross, and Irma Parker.

Production owned by Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

A vulnerable young woman in peril meets and marries the man of her dreams. Their future should be rosy, but there are horns on this rose —  vital questions the groom forbids his bride from asking him. Desperate curiosity finally overwhelms her, and when she poses the questions, disaster strikes.

That's the essence of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin. A supreme masterpiece of 19th-century German opera, it’s often cited as the first work in which Wagner’s extraordinary gifts were totally fulfilled. Mind-blowingly beautiful and powerful music (arias, choruses, orchestral preludes), a riveting story, and thrilling opportunities for onstage pageantry — Lohengrin is all that and more!

Chicago’s Wagner enthusiasts were jubilant when Lyric’s Lohengrin was announced. The work hasn’t been seen here since 1980, so there's huge excitement over its return in an acclaimed production from London’s Covent Garden.

Wagner transports his audience to tenth-centuy Antwerp, where Gottfried, Duke of Brabant, has disappeared. His sister Elsa (sopranos Emily Magee and Amber Wagner) accused of his murder. The call of the herald (baritone Lester Lynch) for a champion to defend Elsa goes unanswered until a knight, Lohengrin (tenor Johan Botha), mysteriously appears in a swan-drawn boat. Before Germany’s King Henry (bass Georg Zeppenfeld, debut), he pledges to protect Elsa and marry her, on condition that she never ask his name, his homeland, or his lineage! But a makiciously ambitious couple, Ortrud (mezzo-soprano Michaela Schuster, debut) and her husband Telramund, Count of Brabant (bass-baritone Greer Grimsley), poison Elsa’s mind by creating suspicions about Lohengrin. On her wedding night, Elsa’s uncertainty finally overwhelms her — and she asks the forbidden questions!

Intent on killing Lohengrin, Telramund rushes into the marriage chamber and is killed by the knight. Finally Lohengrin reveals his name, that he is Parsifal’s son, and that he comes from Montsalvat, where he is one of the knights who guard the Holy Grail. Lohengrin restores the swan to human form: it’s Gottfried, Elsa’s long-lost brother, previously transformed by Ortrud’s evil magic. But all does not end well — a dove draws Lohengrin away in the boat as Elsa collapses.

Wagner found the Lohengrin myth in the poem Parzifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach (himself a character in Wagner’s Tannhaüser). He was intrigued by the myth of the Grail knights, who guarded the chalice from which Christ supposedly drank at the Last Supper. In journeying through the outside world to perform virtuous acts, any Grail knight carried supernatural powers. If, however, anyone asked him the questions that Elsa asked Lohengrin, the knight was obligated to return to Montsalvat, the Grail castle.

In 1851, four years before Lohengrin’s premiere, Wagner wrote that Lohengrin hoped for a woman who would “love him as he was” and would love him unconditionally, without explanation. “Only one thing could release him from his isolation and satisfy his yearning: love.” His sole desire was to be “a complete, whole human being, swayed by and received with the warmth of human emotion, to be human entirely, not a god.” In the end, “doubt and jealousy prove to him that he is not understood but only adored, and tear from him the confession of his divinity, with which he returns into his solitude, destroyed.”

Sir Andrew Davis conducts Lyric’s production, having triumphed leading Lohengrin at the ultimate Wagnerian venue, Germany’s Bayreuth Festival. “This is Wagner’s grand opera,” he declares. “There’s a tremendous amount of chorus music in the huge crowd scenes. Then there’s a perfect hero and heroine, a perfect villain and villainess!” Sir Andrew’s favorite character in the opera is Ortrud, “wonderfully nasty, but also a very human person, despite her being so manipulative.” As for Lohengrin himself, “there’s a purity about him, a passionate nature, that I like very much.”

A Lohengrin conductor’s greatest hurdle generally comes with “the big chorus scenes, including all those passages involving the trumpets – keeping all of that together is challenging,” says Sir Andrew. The first-act prelude is “Wagner’s most supremely mystical moment until Parsifal, with a sort of halo around the sound and the orchestra used almost like a great organ.” One of Davis’s favorite moments is the newlyweds’ duet in Act Three: “It’s marvelous, and a good example of the piece’s huge range. You have the grandest possible scenes, and by contrast, this extreme intimacy and tenderness.”

That duet can be tricky, says Emily Magee: “There’s a huge change between those lyrical, gloriously beautiful lines at the beginning and then the moment where Elsa just snaps. From there on it’s a race to the finish, and you have to be ready for that.”

The American soprano began in Wagner as Elsa, which marked her German debut (Berlin). She’s reprised her portrayal in Barcelona (DVD), Zurich, Munich, Florence, Hamburg, and on CD. “How could Elsa not ask Lohengrin those questions?” Magee wonders. “Everyone in the opera is going toward one thing or another, and to me, Elsa goes in the direction of love, humanity, feelings. Maybe finding these feelings about Lohengrin grows her into a woman – the hard way.”

Magee responds to the opera “from a womanly emotional perspective. Elsa and Lohengrin have an instant and natural love for each other. They’re meant to be together but they can’t, because he can’t be completely human and she can only be completely human. It’s devastatingly sad.”

Lyric’s Lohengrin renews Magee’s partnership from Berlin with another internationally celebrated Wagnerian, South African tenor Johan Botha. He has starred in this masterpiece at the Metropolitan Opera, as well as in Cologne(CD), Vienna, Berlin, London, and Basel.

Things don’t get strenuous for Lohengrin until Act Three. “In the first act,” says Botha, “he just shows up, says ‘I will fight for you,’ then fights, and that’s all. In Act Two, there’s just the confrontation with Telramund – then everyone goes to church! The big work starts with the Brautgemacht [Bridal Chamber Scene]: You sing that, then you appear before the king to explain that you’re not going to go with him to war, then sing the Gralserzählung [Grail Narrative], then scold Elsa for asking the questions. Act Three makes it a demanding role.”

The psychological element interests Botha most. “Lohengrin is a hero, he is coming to save Elsa, but he’s also an idiot! What man can say to a woman, ‘I’ll fight for you, but you can’t ask me my name, where I’m from, or who my parents were’? This doesn’t point the way to happiness, not for anyone. It’s an impossible ultimatum, and I try to play it that way – he must know that this isn’t going to end well.”

A Grail knight, in Botha’s opinion, would have had no previous experience of love. “When he sees Elsa, he immediately falls in love with her. I don’t think he reckoned that this would happen. He never kisses her! I don’t think he really knows what to do. There are many facets to the character, and he does, of course, make an emotional journey, just as Elsa does.” It makes him the hero when he brings Gottfried to life again. “For me, it’s important that, in doing this, he’s trying to give people the hope to carry on.”

Lyric is presenting the Covent Garden production that Opera magazine’s Harold Rosenthal hailed as “a Lohengrin of which any opera house might well be proud.” The 2009 revival, in which Botha starred, found music critic Richard Morrison enthusing in The Times that “[director Elijah Moshinsky] floods the stage with enough spectacle to satisfy Cecil B. DeMille.” Also in 2009, George Hall in The Stage noted that “John Napier’s simple but atmospheric designs still successfully conjure a vision of medieval chivalry.”

Sir Andrew Davis considers Lohengrin wonderful for those new to opera “because it has everything in it. All the music is so accessible, and all the roles are wonderful. Each character is so strongly drawn that it draws the audience in.”

Hail, Lohengrin – and welcome back to Lyric!

On the Record

Roger Pines, dramaturg at Lyric Opera, recommends these recorded performances. 

CDs

Botha, Pieczonka, Lang, Struckmann, Youn, Schulte; West German Radio Orchestra and Chorus, Prague Chamber Chorus, cond. Bychkov (Haenssler)

Domingo, Norman, Randová, Nimsgern, Sotin, Fischer-Dieskau; Vienna Philharmonic, Chorus of the Vienna Staatsoper, cond. Solti (Decca)

Lyric’s Lohengrin in 2010-11, Johan Botha, has documented his enormously acclaimed, magisterially sung portrayal on a new recording led by Semyon Bychkov. The conductor demonstrates as splendid a command of the proceedings as he did in Lyric’s Tristan several seasons ago. Members of the international Wagnerian elite populate the cast, including the unfailingly lovely soprano Adrianne Pieczonka, the outstanding Korean bass Kwangchoul Youn, and three German artists who have made their only Lyric Opera appearances to date in Wagner: Petra Lang, Falk Struckmann, and Eike Wilm Schulte.

Plácido Domingo has sung a number of Lohengrin performances onstage, bringing a welcome sense of Italianate line to this music. He does so again under Sir Georg Solti, supported by veteran Wagnerians, including the ultimate luxury casting of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the Herald. Jessye Norman is a rather unexpected choice for Elsa, a role she never sang in an opera house, and the balance of timbres between her uniquely rich sound and the intense, compact tone of mezzo-soprano Eva Randová’s Ortrud doesn’t really convince. Solti’s command of large-scale forces is complete, and his sumptuous Viennese forces back him up to the hilt.

On DVD

Vogt, Kringelborn, Meier, Fox, König, Trekel; EuropaChor Akademie Mainz, Opéra National de Lyon / Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, cond. Nagano, dir. Lehnhoff (BBC Opus Arte)

Treleaven, Magee, DeVol, H. J. Ketelsen, Hagen, Bork; Gran Teatre del Liceu, cond. Weigle, dir. Konwitschny (EuroArts)

Frey, Studer, Schnaut, Wlaschiha, Schenk; Bayreuth Festival, cond. Schneider, dir. Herzog (DG)

Hofmann, Armstrong, Connell, Roar, Vogel, Weikl; Bayreuth Festival, cond. Nelsson, dir. Friedrich (EuroArts)

There are many strengths of the 1991 Bayreuth production, including Cheryl Studer’s radiant and silver-toned Elsa, Gabriele Schnaut’s sensational Ortrud (a scathingly demonic portrayal, hair-raisingly sung), Ekkehard Wlaschiha’s powerful Telramund, and the justly celebrated Bayreuth chorus. The Lohengrin of Paul Frey pales somewhat by comparison to his colleagues. The sets and costumes are given a rather primitive look (lots of rocks, even in the third-act Bridal Chamber scene), rather like a 1950s Hollywood idea of medieval times.

Emily Magee, Elsa at Lyric in 2010-11, sings superbly in a DVD from Barcelona, which also features Britain’s foremost Wagner tenor, John Treleaven (Siegfried in Lyric’s 2005 Ring cycle), in the title role. The two perform in a staging that will not be to all tastes: director Peter Konwitschny has placed the opera in a schoolroom (it looks right out of the 1950s), with everyone in school uniforms — Magee must be the first soprano to sport beribboned pigtails in this opera! The strong cast gives itself wholeheartedly to the concept, which works surprisingly effectively if one approaches it without preconceptions.

In another Bayreuth performance, Peter Hofmann looks like everyone’s dream of Lohengrin, and he gives of his best vocally (far superior to his Met video, which is no longer available). Similarly light-voiced is his lovely-looking Elsa, Karan Armstrong, and Elizabeth Connell, although admirable, does have a much brighter, lighter-timbred voice than the usual Ortrud. Leif Roar is a powerful Telramund, and Bernd Weikl is definitely classy casting as the Herald. Götz Friederich presents a simple, dark, static staging.

Waltraud Meier makes a recent performance from Baden-Baden worth acquiring. Stunningly attired in black, the notably slim German mezzo is the sexiest, most glamorous-looking Ortrud within recent memory. While her voice is too light and un-expansive at the top for this role, she is invariably “in the moment,” acting with fine subtlety, and ultimately contributing the strongest portrayal in the performance. Supporting her is Tom Fox’s similarly intense, vocally incisive, blessedly unexaggerated Telramund — this duo provides a provides a riveting opening scene in Act Two. Solveig Kringelborn, a very lovely blonde (she looks  heavenly in her billowy white wedding gown with enormously long train), is a fragile Elsa, exceedingly affecting to watch (her  reactions as she listens to Lohengrin’s narrative are heartrending), but without the vocal breadth and overall security for this difficult role. Attired in a silver-blue suit, Klaus Florian Vogt offers a Lohengrin quite unlike any other — not especially individual interpretively but sung with an instrument of youthful sweetness, extremely lyric in character, ultimately perhaps, more suited to Mozart’s Tamino but managing well in this heavier role.

BOLD TYPE = Artist appearing in this opera at Lyric in 2010-11

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