Asher Fisch conducts Die Walküre
MASTERS SERIES
Friday 26 & Saturday 27 May 2023, 7.30pm
Perth Concert Hall
West Australian Symphony Orchestra respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and Elders of Country throughout Western Australia, and the Whadjuk Noongar people on whose lands we work and share music.
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Asher Fisch conducts Die Walküre
Giuseppe VERDI I vespri siciliiani: Overture (9 mins)
Giuseppe VERDI Aida: Prelude (6 mins)
Giuseppe VERDI La Traviata: Prelude to Act I (4 mins)
Giuseppe VERDI La forza del destino: Overture (8 mins)
Interval (25 mins)
Richard WAGNER Die Walküre: Act I (70 mins)
Asher Fisch conductor
Stefanie Irányi Sieglinde
Paul O’Neill Siegmund
Warwick Fyfe Hunding
Musicians of the Australian National Academy of Music
Asher Fisch appears courtesy of Wesfarmers Arts.
Presented by West Australian Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM).
ANAM’s Orchestral Partnership with WASO is generously supported by the Minderoo Foundation.
Wesfarmers Arts Pre-concert Talk
Find out more about the music in the concert with this week’s speaker, Tim White. The Pre-concert Talk will take place at 6.45pm in the Terrace Level Foyer.
Listen to WASO
This performance is recorded for broadcast on ABC Classic. For further details visit abc.net.au/classic
WASO & ANAM On Stage
About the Artists
Asher Fisch
Principal Conductor & Artistic Advisor
A renowned conductor in both the operatic and symphonic worlds, Asher Fisch is especially celebrated for his interpretative command of core German and Italian repertoire of the Romantic and post-Romantic era. He conducts a wide variety of repertoire from Gluck to contemporary works by living composers. Since 2014, Asher Fisch has been the Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO). His former posts include Principal Guest Conductor of the Seattle Opera (2007-2013), Music Director of the New Israeli Opera (1998-2008), and Music Director of the Wiener Volksoper (1995-2000).
Born in Israel, Fisch began his conducting career as Daniel Barenboim’s assistant and kappellmeister at the Berlin Staatsoper. He has built his versatile repertoire at the major opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and Semperoper Dresden. Fisch has conducted at leading American symphony orchestras including those of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia. In Europe he has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Orchestre National de France, among others.
Highlights of Asher Fisch’s 2022-23 season include Lohengrin and La forza del destino at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, as well as concerts with the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Queensland Symphony, Sydney Symphony, and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Fisch’s 2021-22 season featured Adriana Lecouvreur at the Vienna State Opera, a gala concert at the Hungarian National Opera with Kristine Opolais, Otello and Der Rosenkavalier at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and concerts with the Colorado Symphony, Naples Philharmonic, and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
Other recent seasons included concert and opera engagements with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival, Sydney Symphony, Teatro Massimo Orchestra in Palermo, Carmen, Die Zauberflöte, and Parsifal at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Ariadne auf Naxos with the Bayerische Staatsoper at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Tannhäuser at the Tokyo National Theater, and Pagliacci and Schitz at the Israeli Opera.
Asher Fisch’s recent recordings with WASO include Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in 2018, which won Limelight Magazine’s Opera Recording of the Year in 2019, Bruckner’s Symphony No.8 and tenor Stuart Skelton’s first solo album Shining Knight, all of which were released on ABC Classics. Fisch’s recording of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with the Munich Radio Orchestra won Limelight Magazine’s Opera Recording of the Year in 2017. In 2015, he recorded the complete Brahms symphonies with WASO, released on ABC Classics to great acclaim. His recording of Wagner’s Ring Cycle with the Seattle Opera was released on the Avie label in 2014. His first Ring Cycle recording, of the Helpmann award-winning State Opera of South Australia production, garnered praise and awards including the Prix Lauritz Melchior and Académie du disque lyrique Paris. Fisch is also an accomplished pianist and has recorded a solo disc of Wagner piano transcriptions for the Melba label.
Asher Fisch appears courtesy of Wesfarmers Arts.
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About the Artists
Stefanie Irányi
Sieglinde
The German mezzo soprano, Stefanie Irányi, is a renowned opera, concert and art song performer in leading opera and concert venues throughout Europe.
Last season Stefanie Irányi has made her critically acclaimed debuts in the role of Brangäne in a new production of Wagner‘s opera Tristan und Isolde. She also sang the role of Fricka in Das Rheingold in a concert performance under the baton of Kent Nagano, and Luciano Berio‘s Folk Songs in the chamber music series of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Other highlights included a concert performance of the first act of Wagner‘s Die Walküre with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, where she has made her debut in the role of Sieglinde, a Verdi Requiem performance in Basel, Mahler‘s Second Symphony with the Israel Symphony Orchestra and Mahler‘s Third Symphony with the Madrid OSRTVE.
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About the Artists
Paul O’Neill
Siegmund
Australian tenor Paul O’Neill has forged a compelling international career performing throughout Europe and Australasia. His 2021/2022 engagements included Alfredo (La traviata) for Opera Australia, Turiddu (Cavalleria rusticana) and Canio (Pagliacci) for West Australian Opera. In 2022/23, he sings Don José, Cavaradossi, Alfredo, Rodolfo and Otello for West Australian Opera, Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly) for Opera Australia and is tenor soloist in Britten’s War Requiem for West Australian Symphony.
Most recently, Paul sang Don José, Turiddu (Cavalleria rusticana) and Canio (Pagliacci) and Cavaradossi for West Australian Opera, Rodolfo, Narraboth (Salome) and Alfredo for Opera Australia and the title role in Faust for Theater Münster. He has sung Don José at the Glyndebourne Festival; Laca (Jenůfa) for Opéra de Lille; Rodolfo for Halle Opera; Elvino (La sonnambula) and Laca with Graz Opera.
Other roles include: The Duke (Rigoletto) with Opera Holland Park, Opera Australia, West Australian Opera, Staatstheater Karlsruhe and Staatstheater Mainz; and The Italian Tenor (Der Rosenkavalier) for Berlin Staatsoper.
© Patrick Togher Artists’ Management 2023
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About the Artists
Warwick Fyfe
Hunding
Warwick Fyfe is a Helpmann Awardwinning singer and is considered one of Australia’s finest baritones.
Recent appearances include Beckmesser (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Alberich (Der Ring des Nibelungen), Sancho Panza (Don Quichotte), Amonasro (Aida), Geronio (Il turco in Italia), Barone di Trombonok (Il viaggio a Reims) and Klingsor (Parsifal) for Opera Australia, Alberich (Das Rheingold) for the Japan Philharmonic and Tianjin Symphony Orchestras, Peter (Hansel and Gretel) in Singapore, Athanaël (Thaïs) and Amonasro for Finnish National Opera, Bartolo (Il barbiere di Siviglia) for Victorian Opera, Wotan (Die Walküre) in Singapore and Melbourne, Pizarro (Fidelio) in Melbourne and Perth and Bottom (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) in Adelaide.
In 2022, he sang Scarpia (Tosca) for West Australian Opera, The Herald (Lohengrin) for Opera Australia and Wotan (Die Walküre) for Melbourne Opera. In 2023, he returns to OA as Amonasro and Alberich, sings Wotan/Wanderer in Melbourne Opera’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and is a soloist with the Melbourne and West Australian Symphony Orchestras.
© Patrick Togher Artists’ Management 2023
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About the Artists
Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM)
The Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) is dedicated to training the most exceptional young classical musicians from Australia and New Zealand. It is the only professional performance training institute of its kind in Australia, and one of few in the world.
ANAM musicians fly between the stage and the studio; performing in over 180 events each year and receiving more than 60 hours of one-on-one training and hundreds of hours of coaching from an esteemed Faculty and impressive list of national and international guest artists.
From taking meditation classes, singing Bach chorales, laying down a concerto, or building a buzz around their forthcoming gig, to learning how to work a scale, work a fugue, work a room, or work towards securing a vibrant future for classical music. They find themselves sitting crosslegged on the floor with a class of local third graders one day, to performing with the world’s finest artists on stages all across the country the next.
ANAM alumni work in orchestras and chamber ensembles around the world (23 members of WASO are ANAM Alumni), perform as soloists, contribute to educating the next generation of musicians, and regularly win major national and international awards.
Image credit: Cameron Jamieson
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About the Music
Giuseppe Verdi
(1813-1901)
Verdi’s status in the world of Italian opera is unrivalled. Born in the same year as Richard Wagner, he forged a parallel but separate musical path that was as influential as it was popular. As the heir to a tradition dominated by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, he honed his dramatic instincts, furnishing his operas with not only memorable melodies, but also bold characterisations and complex layers of emotional intensity, thus opening the door for the verismo of Puccini and Mascagni. In a career spanning 50 years, Verdi wrote 28 operas, half of which are still a core part of the repertoire. This concert celebrates his legacy with overtures and preludes from four of his most famous operas.
I vespri siciliani: Overture
Our concert begins with an overture that is regarded by many as Verdi’s best. I vespri siciliani was written in response to a commission from the Paris Opéra for a grand opera in five acts. Based on a libretto co-written by Eugène Scribe (and partly set to music by Donizetti some 15 years earlier), the plot concerns the historical tale of Sicily’s bloody revolt against French rule during Easter 1282, an event that subsequently came to be known as the Sicilian Vespers. The premiere of the original French version of the opera took place on 13 June 1855 and was hugely successful, drawing admiration from even Hector Berlioz, who commented on the work’s ‘grandeur and sovereign majesty’. The opera’s initial popularity notwithstanding, it did not enter the Parisian repertoire permanently.
The overture falls into two movements: an opening Largo punctuated by ominous sounding drum rolls, followed by an Allegro agitato section during which we hear several of the opera’s themes, including the beautiful melody on cellos from the Act 3 duet where Monforte, the French Governor, tells the young Sicilian hero, Arrigo, that they are in fact father and son.
Most recent WASO performance:
30 May 1982. David Measham, conductor.
Instrumentation:
piccolo, flute, two each of oboes, clarinets and bassoons; four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones and tuba; three percussion, timpani and strings.
Aida: Prelude
In early 1870, impresario Camille du Locle passed Verdi a scenario for an opera devised by the French archaeologist and Egyptologist, Auguste Mariette. Du Locle was acting on behalf of the Khedive of Egypt, whose previous request for an inaugural piece to celebrate the opening of Cairo’s new opera house Verdi had turned down (another of Verdi’s operas, Rigoletto, was chosen to inaugurate the Khedivial Opera House). If Mariette’s outline piqued Verdi’s interest, the Khedive’s subsequent – and very generous – financial offer sealed the deal. Verdi employed the services of librettist Antonio Ghislanzoni, with whom he had collaborated when revising La forza del destino for La Scala in 1869. Aida opened in Cairo on 24 December 1871, conducted by the celebrated double bass virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini (Verdi, unwilling to make the journey to Egypt, stayed at home to prepare for Aida’s Italian premiere in Milan). Both occasions were triumphs, with Verdi commenting in a letter to a friend that the opera was ‘certainly not one of my worst’ – a spectacular understatement, given that within ten years of its premiere Aida would be produced in some 50 countries.
For many, Aida is the epitome of grand opera, with its spectacle, rousing choruses and public moments. But it is testament to Verdi’s genius that, amid the pomp, there are moments of powerful human drama and intimacy. At the opera’s heart is an intensely poignant tale: Aida, an enslaved Ethiopian princess, is caught between her love for her country and her love for Radamès, who is chosen to lead the Egyptians into battle against the Ethiopians. Verdi composed a fullscale overture for the La Scala premiere but discarded it in favour of this shorter prelude in which Aida’s fragile, chromatic theme is contrasted with the music for the Priests.
Most recent WASO performance:
30 June 1981. Albert Rosen, conductor.
Instrumentation:
three flutes (third also piccolo), two each of oboes, clarinets and bassoons; four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba; timpani and strings.
La traviata: Prelude to Act 1
La traviata survived a disastrous premiere to become not only a worldwide audience favourite, but Verdi’s pick, too: when asked which of his operas he liked best, he replied, ‘Speaking as a professional, Rigoletto; as an amateur, La traviata.’
Even by Verdi’s fecund standards (between 1842 and 1853 – his so-called ‘galley years’ – he wrote 16 operas), Traviata was composed in record time. When in 1852 he was contracted to produce a new opera for the following year’s Venice Carnival season, he was already working on Il trovatore, whose premiere was given in Rome just weeks before that of La traviata at Teatro La Fenice on 6 March 1853.
The libretto of La traviata (by Francesco Maria Piave) is based on Alexander Dumas’ novel La dame aux camélias, the stage adaptation of which premiered in Paris in 1852. The novel is a thinly veiled chronicle of Dumas’ relationship with courtesan Marie Duplessis, who died of consumption in 1847, aged 23. As Verdi commented, it was a ‘subject of our times’. The Venetian authorities disagreed, however: baulking at the prospect of an onstage depiction of Paris’s demi-monde, they insisted that the opera’s contemporary setting be pushed back 150 years in order to place the subject matter at a historically safe distance. Verdi was ahead of his time: it was some years before productions of La traviata restored the original, intended mid-19th-century setting. Verdi understood the drama that could be wrought from telling the story of the era’s courtesans, who walked a tightrope between a hedonistic life in high society and being shunned by the very people who sought their favours. In the opera Violetta faces an agonising choice, and the demanding soprano part wrings every last drop of emotion from the role.
For La traviata Verdi again eschews a full-scale operatic overture. In a reverse chronological structure that makes for great theatre, the short Prelude to Act 1 begins with music that prefigures the opera’s tragic ending, with shimmering divided violins depicting Violetta’s frailty; we then hear the theme from her Act 2 aria ‘Amami, Alfredo’; as this melody is passed to the cellos, the violins play a coquettish obbligato that evokes the effervescent Violetta as she appears in the opening party scene.
Most recent WASO performance:
10 December 1999. Richard Mills, conductor.
Instrumentation:
flutes, oboe, clarinet and two bassoons; four horns and strings.
La forza del destino: Overture
After Un ballo in maschera (premiered in 1859), Verdi’s work rate slowed. He married his partner of ten years, the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, served as a member of the newly formed Italian parliament, and generally busied himself with non-musical pursuits at his country home in Sant’Agata, near his birthplace in Northern Italy. In late 1860 he received an offer for a new opera for the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg. Verdi again collaborated with Piave for the libretto, based on a Spanish melodrama by Angel de Saavedra, about a blood feud in which an ill-fated elopement results in a father, son and daughter each
meeting an untimely and violent end. The reception to the opera’s 1862 premiere was tepid, and Verdi subsequently revised it (with Ghislanzoni, Piave having been incapacitated by a stroke), and the new version premiered at La Scala in 1869. The overture begins with a unison call to attention from the brass, before the introduction of the febrile ‘fate’ theme – a rising four-note motif that recurs throughout. We then hear themes associated with Alvaro’s plea for mercy to Carlo in Act 4, Leonora’s prayer to the Virgin, and her Act 2 duet with Padre Guardiano. The music rises to a dramatic climax, foreshadowing the tragic conclusion of the opera.
Lorraine Neilson © 2023
Most recent WASO performance:
19-20 June 2015. Otto Tausk, conductor.Instrumentation:
piccolo, flute, two each of oboes, clarinets and bassoons; four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba; percussion, timpani, two harps and strings.
Glossary
Allegro agitato – both a tempo indication (faster than a usual Allegro) and a mood indication (agitated).
Chromatic – a passage of notes moving up or down in pitch by very small steps.
La Scala – theatre in Milan, one of the principal opera houses of the world and the leading Italian house.
Largo – very slow and broad.
Libretto – literally, a ‘little book’: the words of an opera or oratorio.
Motif – a short, distinctive melodic or rhythmic figure, often part of or derived from a theme.
Obbligato – literally, ‘obligatory’: an instrument or part that must not be omitted. By extension, a prominent accompanying melody.
Unison – where all the voices or instruments are playing the same tune, rather than sounding different notes simultaneously to make chords.
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About the Music
Richard Wagner
(1813-1883)
Die Walküre: Act I
The Ring cycle grew out of Wagner’s idea for an opera called Siegfrieds Tod (Siegfried’s Death), the text of which he sketched in 1848. Much of this material would end up in Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods), the last opera in the cycle. Wagner found that he needed to trace the Teutonic legend further and further back, ultimately producing a sequence of four operas which, as he once put it, contain ‘the world’s end and its beginning’. These are linked by a web of musical tags or leitmotifs, each of which represents a character, idea or emotion.
An avid polemicist, Wagner devoted his 1852 monograph Opera and Drama to the need to reform the genre along the lines that Gluck had in the 18th century, and execrated those works (such as Rossini’s) which elevated the singer, through the medium of the aria, to the primary role. At this time Wagner felt that the music should be seamless, and able to ‘completely stir, and also to completely satisfy, feeling’; vocal lines should in a sense be a kind of heightened speech, so as to render the libretto intelligible. Together with the stage picture, these elements in Wagner’s view fuse to form the ‘total work of art’ where no element draws attention to itself.
In Das Rheingold, the first opera in the tetralogy, we can still hear the outlines of set-pieces – arias, interludes and so on. By Act I of Die Walküre, however, the ideals of Opera and Drama have been largely met. The cross-referencing effect of the leitmotifs gives the music an intense unity, and the vocal writing responds sensitively to the content of the text – here in a scenario which is almost claustrophobically intimate. Interestingly, though, when Wagner temporarily abandoned the third Ring opera, Siegfried, it was to write Tristan and Isolde, where the music is unarguably the most important element.
Die Walküre was completed in 1856 and first presented at the command of King Ludwig of Bavaria in 1870. In 1876 it was seen as part of the first Ring cycle at Wagner’s theatre in Bayreuth.
The story so far:
In Das Rheingold, the Nibelung dwarf Alberich steals the gold guarded on the river’s bed by the Rhinemaidens. With it he fashions a magic ring which allows him to enslave his fellow Nibelungs. Meanwhile two giants, Fafner and Fasolt, have completed the building of Valhalla, the castle of Wotan and his fellow gods. The agreed payment for their work is the goddess Freia, but Wotan reneges; with the help of the fire-god Loge he tricks Alberich into giving up his treasure (including the ring) in order to buy off the giants. Alberich curses the ring as it is taken from him, and sure enough the giants fight over it. Fafner kills his brother and retreats with the treasure to the wilderness (where he later assumes the form of a dragon). The Gods enter Valhalla in triumph, despite the pleas of the Rhinemaidens for the return of their gold, and the cynical asides of Loge, who knows that it will all end badly.
Between the end of Das Rheingold and Act I of Die Walküre, Wotan has had a couple of affairs. With the earth goddess, Erda, he has fathered the Valkyries, warrior maidens who gather the souls of fallen heroes and take them to Valhalla. The Ring, after all, is still at large, so Wotan’s power is not absolute and he needs a bodyguard. Disguised as a man, Wälse, he has also fathered twins with a mortal mother, hoping to produce a hero who will save the world from the net of curses and lies which Wotan has allowed to develop. The twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde, were separated as children, but meet again in Act I of Die Walküre.
Now read on:
The opera opens with a fierce orchestral storm, at the height of which Siegmund bursts into a hut built around a huge ash tree in the forest. He is fleeing from enemies and is exhausted, so asks the young woman in the hut for a drink. She is frightened, but gives him a drink, as Wagner’s music spins a passage of extraordinary warmth out of a high cello line. Neither knows the other’s identity, but a powerful attraction develops. Sieglinde, however, is married – against her will – to Hunding, who arrives home to the sound of a grim motif for horns and Wagner tubas. According to the rules of hospitality he must make his guest welcome, despite his evident distrust of this man who calls himself Wehwalt, or ‘son of sorrow’.
Siegmund describes how he, his mother and sister lived in the forest until a day when he came home to find the women gone and their hut destroyed. In the course of the discussion, however, it becomes clear that the enemies from whom Siegmund was fleeing are Hunding’s clan. As Siegmund killed some of them, Hunding gives him the protection of his house for the night, but vows vengeance on the unarmed Siegmund the following morning.
Left alone, Siegmund remembers that his father once promised that he would provide a sword in the time of highest need. Sieglinde, who has drugged her husband, returns and tells Siegmund that on her wedding night a disguised stranger (whom the orchestra identifies for us as Wotan) strode into the hut and plunged into the trunk of the ash tree a sword which no-one has been able to pull out. The C major trumpet arpeggio which represents the sword glows in the orchestra.
Suddenly the hut’s door blows open to reveal a spring landscape bathed in moonlight. Siegmund sings what is almost a conventional aria about the passing of winter’s storms and reveals that he is Siegmund the Wälsung; Sieglinde responds by revealing her identity as his twin sister. He pulls the sword from the tree and calls it ‘Nothung’ (from Not or ‘need’) and the twins rush into the forest to consummate their love for each other and continue the Wälsung blood-line as the curtain falls.
And then:
Siegmund must, of course, die for breaking the incest taboo, and Brünnhilde, the Valkyrie of the title, will be punished for trying to help him in defiance of her father. But Sieglinde will escape and give birth to Siegfried, and there will be two more operas before the Rhinemaidens get their gold back.
Gordon Kerry © 2004
First performance:
26 June 1870, National Theatre Munich.
First performance as part of the Ring cycle:
14 August 1876, Bayreuth Festspielhaus
Librettist: Richard Wagner
Language: German
Instrumentation:
piccolo, three flutes (third doubles piccolo), three oboes, cor anglais (doubles oboe), three clarinets (B♭, A), bass clarinet (B♭, A), three bassoons (third doubles contrabassoon); eight horns (two double Wagner Tubas in F, 2 in B♭), three trumpets, bass trumpet, two tenor trombones, bass trombone, contrabass trombone, tuba; two timpani, snare drum, triangle, cymbals, tamtam, glockenspiel; two harps and strings.
Glossary
Leitmotif – a musical motif associated with a particular character, concept or situation
Arpeggio – a musical gesture in which the notes of a chord are ‘spread’, or played one after the other instead of simultaneously. It nearly always starts at the bottom of the chord.
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New to Wagner's Ring Cycle?
Act I of Die Walküre is a tiny snippet from Wagner's epic Ring cycle. Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) is made up of four operas, with Die Walküre the second opera of the four, and collectively the cycle runs for a whopping 15 hours! Check out the below video to learn more about how Act I of Die Walküre fits into Wagner's odyssey. Several years ago our friends at the Sydney Symphony managed to summarise the entire Ring cycle in just two and a half minutes. We recommend slowing down your playback speed!
Wagner's 15-hour Ring Cycle in two and a half minutes
Die Walküre: Act I
Text & Translation
English
Timeline
