(New York) Günther Groissböck was about to take the stage at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow for the first act of a new production of Lohengrinlast winter, when his wife, Isabel, texted that she and their 12-year-old daughter were about to take off to return to Milan.
“Then she sent me a text message to tell me: no, the pilot has just announced that we are no longer authorized to enter European airspace,” recalls the Austrian bass. “And then they were tricked because they only had a single entry visa. »
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine 13 hours before the premiere of François Girard’s staging of Wagner’s opera – a production that will open the second half of the season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Sunday. . This war quickly had an impact on the actors and audiences of the Bolshoi, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin. And pushed the Met to abandon the project to use Russian sets and to build identically.
“Something incredible happened at the theater that evening: the energy on stage and in the room, told the Quebec director this week in an interview. At first, I thought I had some responsibility for it, and I thought it was like a success. But I think a lot of that energy came from a protest” of what was happening across the street in the Kremlin.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Francois Girard
The singer Groissböck’s family finally returned home via Istanbul and François Girard left Moscow a day earlier than expected.
The Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, had attended the last dress rehearsal in Moscow, because this staging was to be a co-production of the two big houses. “When I returned to New York and the invasion began, I immediately took the decision to sever ties with any official Russian institution or any artist associated with (Vladimir) Putin,” Gelb said.
At a cost of more than a million dollars, the Met had a new set built in Wales and costumes made in New York and Hong Kong. Due to the change, technical rehearsals, scheduled for last August, have been postponed until this month.
Third Wagner for Girard
François Girard is staging his third Wagner opera at the Met, after a Parsifal acclaimed in 2013 and a Der Fliegende Holland (The Flying Dutchman), which received mixed reviews in 2020.
Lohengrin is Wagner’s most-seen opera at the Met, with 717 performances. A minimalist staging by Robert Wilson in 1998 replaced a version by August Everding dating from 1976.
Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead a cast this weekend that includes tenor Piotr Beczala in the title role, Groissböck (King Heinrich), bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin (Telramund) and sopranos Tamara Wilson (Elsa) and Christine Goerke (Ortrud).
” Lohengrin is perhaps Wagner’s first attempt at the magical, the ethereal, the celestial — dreamy music, dare I say it. It shows from the prelude,” said the Montreal conductor. “There is an otherworldly quality to both scores, but Lohengrinalso because it probably predates Parsifal, is also somewhat confluent with bel canto. »
François Girard plants opera in a post-apocalyptic era; already, at the prelude, the Moon projected into orbit around the Earth will then explode.
This Lohengrin will run for 10 performances at the Met, until 1er april ; the morning of March 18 will be simulcast worldwide.
But François Girard will not leave New York: he is directing the American premiere of The Hunting Gunby Yasushi Inoue, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, from March 16, then a revival of ghost ship at the Met from May 30.
“This music is written for extraterrestrials. It’s not written for human beings,” Girard said. “The more Wagner I do, the more difficult it is for me to consider going elsewhere in the repertoire. »