*falls over*

[winter]

Got back yesterday near midnight and was so exhausted I fell into bed without even touching the computer. Reviews will be up tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, highlights of my Berlin trip:

- seeing Uwe Kröger, twice. No Pia, but oh, UWE. No more watching certain Hungarians for you, the set'll fall apart!
- Spargel - height of the season, and oh, they were delicious
- lovely Roman-inspired sandals and a jacket that cost far too much
- stuffed alligator O.o

Comments

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

He had good days, then. The reports of his singing in the premiere weren't great, and I still haven't recovered from his croaking in the Musical Forever concert.

It's not a good start if the ensemble hate the production. I wonder if it's the theatre or what.

[winter]

I'm wondering if it's not a cold running rampant - Bruno Grassini's voice and energy were MIA on Thursday, and Pia wasn't there on Thursday though she should have been (she misses Fridays regularly to record the Tarzan-Jane casting show). Uwe went into his sharp registers sometimes, but not often, and the first Schatten was lyrical. I'll upload the audio soonish.

From what I've heard, it's the theatre - poor wages, incredibly strict and not letting them get away with any expressiveness.

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

I hope that they'll enjoy it better in Zurich in a different theatre. If I indeed get myself on that internship in Strasbourg, I'm thinking that a trip to Switzerland could be in order.

[winter]

Depending on cast changes, I would say. I know Uwe and Pia will be leaving soon, and while Annemieke is a good Elisabeth, she's a very angry one. I've no idea what shape Felix'll be in - has he done anything much since Krolock? I wasn't fond of Bruno as Lucheni, and they simply must get another Franz-Joseph - Markus cannot act. And a decent second Sophie, because Christa was off on Thursday and whatshername the second one was dreadful.

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

I don't know about Felix - I think he's mostly been doing concerts. We'll see when reports or bootlegs of him start getting out, I guess. I've only heard audios of Bruno as Lucheni, but he's always seemed rather lacklustre to me, not bad but not a very interesting Lucheni.

I want to see an Elisabeth production in German, though. I worship Kunze's lyrics, and the Finnish translation sucked and I can't understand much Hungarian.

[winter]

The lyrics were the one good bit, but the thing is, a lot of what is originally sung was changed to speaking, which annoyed me immensely. The second Sophie's voice was very poor, so most of Bellaria was spoken, which ruined it. No rhyme nor reason to it, either - Max had a gorgeous voice (he was the Viennese Javert) and they had his ghost-appearance in Act 2 be all spoken instead of sung.

Bruno's... mostly like Ethan or Thomas, but without their madness and intensity. Just a rather bored Italian anarchist ;)

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

That's just weird. I love it about Elisabeth that it's through-sung (like Kunze's musicals in general). It always made more sense to me than have the characters alternate between speaking and singing, which many musicals do. And it's written to be through-sung so changing a lot of the sung lines to spoken lines can't work. It already bothered me a bit that they had so much dialogue in Budapest, but at least it was added lines, not speaking lines that should be sung.

[winter]

I got the impression most of the spoken lines were put in to cover voice deficiencies. A lot of the time phrases that should be sung high are whispered instead.