LOHENGRIN

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a critically acclaimed cast led by tenor Piotr Beczala in François Girard’s new production

Often regarded as the grand finale to the long tradition of German Romantic opera, LOHENGRIN centers on a valiant knight who saves a virtuous maiden, on the sole condition that she never ask his name. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium to lead the premiere of an atmospheric new production of the opera by director François Girard, who approached the piece as a quasi-sequel to his 2013 staging of PARSIFAL. (In the opera’s climactic final moments, Lohengrin proclaims himself as the son of King Parsifal and is, like his father, a Knight of the Holy Grail.) In this performance, tenor Piotr Beczała gives a career-defining performance in the title role, graduating from the lyrical Italian and French roles for which he is so well known. Soprano Tamara Wilson is the noble Elsa, going head-to-head with powerhouse Wagnerian soprano Christine Goerke as Ortrud, and bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin and bass Gunther Groissböck complete the extraordinary principal cast as Telramund and King Heinrich.

“Tremendous... full of thrilling moments... outstanding singing and indelible images …” (Financial Times)

“The biggest, plushest voice onstage belonged to Goerke, who turned Ortrud’s poisonous manipulations into the opera’s main event” (The Wall Street Journal)