Hans-Joachim Ketelsen

From the Semperoper Dresden, 2006 Fairy-tale Opera in three acts by Engelbert Humperdinck based on a libretto by Adelheid Wette

A classic production from the Bayreuth Festival is made available here for the first time on DVD! Staged and directed by Richard Wagner’s grandson Wolfgang Wagner at the Bayreuther Festspiele in 1999, this production of Wagner’s only comic opera features an all-star cast and the Bayreuther Festspiele chorus and orchestra under the direction of Daniel Barenboim.

Inspired by Wagner’s own tortured affair with the wife of his patron, this searing masterwork is based on Arthurian legend and tells of an illicit romance between a Breton nobleman and the Irish princess betrothed to his uncle and king. The composer’s larger-than-life sensibilities are on full display throughout the score: Along with intoxicating orchestral music that surges in tandem with the couple’s burgeoning passion and a chord left symbolically unresolved until the last moments of the opera, the opera also features one of the repertory’s most soaring and ecstatic final climaxes, as Isolde surrenders to a love so powerful that she transcends life itself.

This production of Wagner's mythic opera LOHENGRIN was recorded at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu in 2006 with Sebastian Weigle conducting Liceu Grand Theatre Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

Production of the State Opera Dresden 1989, directed by Joachim Herz

The Semperoper caused a sensation in November 2007 when it visited Japan for the first time in twenty-six years. The demand for tickets and the audience's enthusiasm were unprecedented, not least because the company was staging a piece that is performed more authentically in Dresden than anywhere else in the world: Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, which received its first performance in Dresden in 1911. Leading the ensemble was the radiant-voiced and profoundly thoughtful Marschallin of Anne Schwanewilms.