(Above: Ben Heppner and Emma Vetter)
Sir Simon Rattle is chilling in Aix-en-Provence for the July 3 premiere of Wagner's Götterdämmerung. The new, minimal Stéphane Braunschweig production is one of the offerings in this year's Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (festival #61), and is the final installment of Rattle's Aix Ring Cycle collaboration. The cast boasts Ben Heppner as Siegfried, Anne Sofie von Otter as Waltraute, Emma Vetter as Gutrune, and Katarina Dalayman as Brünnhilde.
Rattle (& the Berliner Philharmoniker) & Braunschweig will bid adieu to their Ring Cycle pact, which began in 2006 for the Festival's first Wagner cycle with Das Rheingold. It was followed by Die Walküre in 2007 (which was taped for DVD), Siegfried in 2008, and finishes with 2009's Götterdämmerung. Can Grand Théâtre de Provence contain all the Wagnerian hawtness? We will never know!
(Above: Katarina Dalayman and Anne Sofie von Otter)