The co-production by Auditorio de Tenerife and the Oviedo Opera Foundation will receive three performances in the Symphony Hall
Auditorio de Tenerife presents the second opera production of its season: Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin, for which the composer wrote both the music and libretto. Performances will take place in the Symphony Hall on Sunday 15 November at 6.00 pm, and on Wednesday 18 and Saturday 21 November at 7.30 pm. Co-produced by Ópera de Tenerife and the foundation Fundación Ópera de Oviedo, the production stars American tenor Corby Welch in the title role of the Swan Knight.
Alongside Welch, the cast includes Basque soprano Miren Urbieta-Vega as Elsa von Brabant, the young woman who agrees to marry the mysterious knight on the condition that she never asks his name or origin; Austrian-Polish soprano Magdalena Anna Hofmann as Ortrud, Elsa’s scheming adversary; Icelandic baritone Ólafur Sigurðarson as Friedrich von Telramund, Elsa’s accuser and Ortrud’s accomplice; Armenian-German bass Vazgen Gazaryan as King Heinrich der Vogler; and Serbian baritone Milan Perišić as the King’s Herald.
The three-act Romantic opera, first performed in 1850, is directed by Guillermo Amaya. His staging explores the characters’ universal emotions: love, fear, insecurity, the need for trust, the desire for recognition and the impossibility of ever fully knowing another person. Today (7 November), Amaya discussed the production’s set design with José Carlos Acha, Tenerife Island Council’s Councillor for Culture, who attended the beginning of rehearsals.
The creative team also includes set designer Pablo Menor, costume designer Raquel Porter and lighting designer Ion Aníbal López. British conductor Paul Daniel will conduct the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra in Wagner’s monumental score, which includes the celebrated Bridal Chorus, popularly known as the ‘Wedding March’. They will be joined by Intermezzo, Ópera de Tenerife’s resident chorus, directed by Miguel Ángel Arqued.
Alongside Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser, Lohengrin belongs to Wagner’s group of Romantic operas. It marks the culmination of the nineteenth-century German Romantic operatic tradition while anticipating Wagner’s later music dramas and their far-reaching theoretical and practical innovations. Conventional self-contained operatic numbers give way to a more continuous musical discourse that closely follows the dramatic action.
This conception of opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk, or ‘total work of art’, yields moments of exceptional beauty, including the Prelude to Act I, Elsa’s Dream, the Prelude to Act III and Lohengrin’s celebrated narration, all contributing to the work’s distinctive atmosphere.
Tenerife Island Council is once again offering its ‘Lanzadera Ópera’ shuttle service, providing free transport on two TITSA buses departing from Adeje and Buenavista to Auditorio de Tenerife for performances included in the Ópera de Tenerife subscription season. Free shuttle tickets are available at www.operadetenerife.com until noon on the Friday before the first performance, and until the day before the Wednesday and Saturday performances.
Tickets cost €30–€50, or €10 for under-30s, and are available at www.auditoriodetenerife.com, from the box office (Monday to Friday, 10.00 am–5.00 pm; Saturday, 10.00 am–2.00 pm), or by calling 902 317 327 during box-office hours. Discounts are available for students, jobseekers, large families and other eligible groups.
Ópera de Tenerife is an initiative of Tenerife Island Council, delivered through Auditorio de Tenerife, with support from the Canary Islands Government’s Canary Islands Institute for Cultural Development and the Spanish Government’s National Institute of Performing Arts and Music (INAEM).