:) I don't think I've ever heard/seen the opera switched back to the original Swedish Setting, though I know that's a thing. BTW, did anyone ever stage Rigoletto with the Duke switched back to King Francis I., which he is in Hugo's original novel, and Mantua to Paris? (Verdi had to make the change for identical reasons. Ah, 19th century censorship!)
Domingo I saw twice live when he was still a tenor, once during one of those Three Tenors events with Pavarotti & Carreras, and once in Bayreuth, where he sang Sigmund to Waltraud Maier's Sieglinde in Die Walküre. Since Waltraud Maier had just quarrelled with Wolfgang Wagner, everyone knew this would be her last appearance in Bayreuth (and it was until this year, more than two decades later!), and she was glorious. The audience melted, and not just because of the summer heat. (Which in the Festspielhaus is something, since it can't have modern air conditioning for sound reasons.) Domingo didn't even try to outshine her, though Sigmund is the bigger part, he supported her, and it was just one of the best experiences I had in Bayreuth.
Back then, one of my classmates from the Wagner lectures had an internship in Bayreuth, and she told me a Domingo/Maier anecdote - Waltraud M. had thought it a nice idea to give him a little present, a bottle of mead, which is "Met" in German, to be delivered at his wardrobe, because Met is what Sieglinde gives to Sigmund as a greeting in the opera, with a German note saying "Mead from your Sieglinde". And - nothing. He doesn't mention it. Since she's worked with him before, and knows it's unlike him, she asks whether the mead wasn't delivered, and quoth Domingo: "Oh, that was from you? I thought the Met had send it!"
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Date: 2018-08-23 12:37 pm (UTC)Domingo I saw twice live when he was still a tenor, once during one of those Three Tenors events with Pavarotti & Carreras, and once in Bayreuth, where he sang Sigmund to Waltraud Maier's Sieglinde in Die Walküre. Since Waltraud Maier had just quarrelled with Wolfgang Wagner, everyone knew this would be her last appearance in Bayreuth (and it was until this year, more than two decades later!), and she was glorious. The audience melted, and not just because of the summer heat. (Which in the Festspielhaus is something, since it can't have modern air conditioning for sound reasons.) Domingo didn't even try to outshine her, though Sigmund is the bigger part, he supported her, and it was just one of the best experiences I had in Bayreuth.
Back then, one of my classmates from the Wagner lectures had an internship in Bayreuth, and she told me a Domingo/Maier anecdote - Waltraud M. had thought it a nice idea to give him a little present, a bottle of mead, which is "Met" in German, to be delivered at his wardrobe, because Met is what Sieglinde gives to Sigmund as a greeting in the opera, with a German note saying "Mead from your Sieglinde". And - nothing. He doesn't mention it. Since she's worked with him before, and knows it's unlike him, she asks whether the mead wasn't delivered, and quoth Domingo: "Oh, that was from you? I thought the Met had send it!"
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