Eike Wilm Schulte

James Levine’s love for this monumental opera shimmers throughout this exciting performance. It was an afternoon to remember: Met favorite Deborah Voigt singing her first run as the proud Irish princess opposite tenor Robert Dean Smith—making an astonishing Met debut in front of a live worldwide movie-theater audience. Michelle DeYoung was a sisterly Brangäne and Matti Salminen an imposing King Marke.

Flemings voice might have been made for Ariadne and she achieved a great personal triumph in this production: The chief glory of the evening was hearing Renee Fleming, the Straussian soprano par excellence, making her role debut as Ariadne… As the possessor of what is, possibly, the most beautiful soprano voice in the world, she put her vocal treasures in the service of an empathic, nuanced interpretation of the role. From the creamy top, through a rich, warm middle, to the bewitching, darker colours of her lower register, Fleming poured her magnificent sound into Strausss enchanting melodic arcs, animating the sadness, vulnerability, and desire of the bereft princess...

Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin staged in 1987 by Werner Herzog in Bayreuth.