Bravo Gelsenkirchen!
by Sam Eadie, Donizetti Society Newsletter 93, October 2004
(part of a report on his visit to Gelsenkirchen. Thanks to the MusikTheater im Revier for supplying the photographs)
Gelsenkirchen is a town of 295,000 in the Ruhr, whose coal mining past is reflected in its current 22% unemployment rate and the name of its opera house: das Musiktheater im Revier or MiR.
In pleasurable contrast to this year’s unnecessarily violent, arbitrary and ultimately disappointing Wildbad productions of Mayr’s L’amor coniugale and Rossini’s Ciro in Babilonia, the MiR bravely put on, in repertory, the German première of Donizetti’s Rosmonda d’Inghilterra and a spirited rendering of Offenbach’s Les Brigands, given in German as “Die Banditen”.
This was a Rosmonda which would inevitably be compared with the London and Belfast versions of 1975 with Yvonne Kenny and Ludmilla Andrew and the (much more challenging) 1994 Opera Rara CD with Renée Fleming, Nelly Miriciou, Bruce Ford, Alastair Miles, Diana Montague and the Philharmonia Orchestra directed by David Parry. But although the Gelsenkirchen soloists mostly belonged to the regular MiR company and must have been virtually unknown to visitors from beyond the Ruhr, all five brought the opera to life in a most credible fashion, in spite of a few silly gimmicks in the staging.
Mark Adler as Enrico is a lighter tenor than Bruce Ford, but was convincingly heroic while Anke Sieloff’s Leonora had an incredible range of vocal and acting ability. Claudia Braun as Rosmonda is also a gifted actress and was able to sing movingly in the tragic scenes, although there was a little straining in her top notes.
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Rosmonda (Claudia Braun) and Enrico ( Mark Adler)
Nicholas Karmolsky’s base voice was strong and well up to the standard of Alastair Miles while Anna Agathonos, “punished by an impossible wig” as one German commentator wrote, though not quite on a par with Diana Montague had resonant mezzo tones, if a little stiff in the top register. The cast got excellent support from the Neue Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia under the confident direction of Samuel Bächli.
Altogether a wonderful evening, worthy of the maestro.
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Leonora ( Anke Sieloff) and Rosmonda
(Sam’s article also included a report on Offenbach’s Die Banditen, which also impressed him)
On the strength of this year, Gelsenkirchen, a short detour from Düsseldorf or Köln, is as much worth a special visit as the better known German venues.