Monday, August 25, 2014

La Nina: no words are enough

My interview with the great Nina Stemme is in today's Independent, trailing her appearance as Salome at the Proms on Saturday night. Because last year she was there to do the Ring cycle and words just weren't enough, either for us or for her.


As Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Ring cycle at last summer’s Proms, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, she had London at her feet; one critic commented that her final scene in Götterdämmerung “flooded out into the auditorium in an unending stream of perfection. No one who heard it will ever forget it.” How did it feel to her? “I had to use my breath, but it was breathtaking,” she quips. “But I don’t have words to describe it, because it is music, and no expression is imaginative enough.”.....

Read the whole thing here. 

And here's a taster of her Salome from the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockhom, filmed last December. Fasten your seatbelts.