Wagner festival gets rapturous reception

‘Parsifal’ enthusiastically received Group highlights its local roots

BAYREUTH, Germany, July 26, (AFP): Germany’s legendary Bayreuth opera festival, dedicated to the works of Richard Wagner, got off to a rapturous start on Monday with a brand new production of the composer’s last opera, “Parsifal”, enthusiastically received by the first-night audience.

While this year’s month-long proceedings have been overshadowed by a series of deadly attacks in the country, the performers were tumultuously applauded at the end of the six-hour performance.

However, opera critics were less enamoured with the new reading of Wagner’s most enigmatic work by German director Uwe Eric Laufenberg.

Out of respect for those killed or wounded in attacks over the last week in Ansbach, Munich and Wuerzburg — all in the state of Bavaria — organisers cancelled the lavish banquet that traditionally follows the first performance of the festival.

Also cancelled was the usual red carpet procession.

Inside the theatre, a message projected on the curtain said: “The Bayreuth festival dedicates today’s performance to all victims of the violent acts in recent days and to their loved ones.”

The month-long festival opened the day after a man set off a bomb near another music festival in the southern town of Ansbach — just an hour’s train ride from Bayreuth — killing himself and wounding 15 people.

Authorities said he was a 27-yearold Syrian refugee.

Rampage

On Friday, an 18-year-old GermanIranian went on a shooting rampage in a Munich shopping centre killing nine people before shooting himself.

On July 18, five people were injured in an axe attack on train in Wuerzburg that was claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

Tighter security on Bayreuth’s mythic Green Hill — on which the world-famous Festspielhaus festival theatre stands — has been in place since the start of rehearsals in June.

Town authorities called for steppedup measures following suggestions

announced Monday.

The rock legend wrote the music for “Lazarus” which premiered in November NEW YORK, July 26, (AFP): LCD Soundsystem, the electronic group who became critical favorites in the 2000s before briefly bowing out, embraced their hometown identity as they returned to the big stage in New York.

The group, known for bringing a punk edge and clever wordplay to dance music, played before an enthusiastic crowd of thousands Sunday on the final day of New York’s inaugural Panorama festival.

With a sweaty crowd of thousands swaying before them, frontman James Murphy began by informing he would not be talking much as the band pushed with gusto through its hits.

LCD Soundsystem enthusiastically highlighted is local roots. For the crescendoing “New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down”, the stage lit up in a mock Manhattan skyline — with the real one also in sight from the festival on the East River’s Randalls Island.

The group also dusted off its funk-infused cover of “Bye Bye Bayou” by Alan Vega, the chaosloving punk rock pioneer from the band Suicide who died on July 16.

that this year’s production of “Parsifal” might be perceived as critical of Islam, a charge denied by director Laufenberg.

Unlike past editions of the festival, all bags and cushions have been banned from the auditorium and cloakrooms while patrons have to carry photo ID with them at all times.

Meanwhile, the approach road up the Green Hill to the Festspielhaus has been blocked to cars.

Star Klaus Florian Vogt was rapturously received for his interpretation of the title role with his clear, distinctive tenor.

German bass-baritone Georg Zeppenfeld almost stole the show as

at a small theater in New York. An opening gala in December marked Bowie’s last public appearance before he died on Jan

LCD Soundsystem had also shown love for Vega in one of its best-known songs, “Losing My Edge”, a tale of growing older and losing hipster street credibility.

Murphy in the song offers his bona fides with the line, “I was there in 1974 at the first Suicide practices in a loft in New York City” — an apocryphal boast for a singer born in 1970 but one that generated cheers at the festival in light of Vega’s death.

LCD Soundsystem in 2011 had played an epic “last show” at Madison Square Garden that lasted more than three hours and was turned into a documentary.

But the group reunited this year for a series of festivals starting with Coachella in California, one of the world’s most lucrative music events.

Sensing a market in the booming live music economy, Coachella’s promoters created Panorama, the second major rock festival on New York’s Randalls Island after homegrown Governors Ball.

Hoping to distinguish itself, Panorama brought in interactive high-tech art installations and, in a Coachella touch, air-conditioned dance stages.

Gurnemanz, while Russian soprano Elena Pankratova, making her Bayreuth debut, put in an astonishingly accomplished performance as Kundry.

Conductor Hartmut Haenchen, brought in at just three weeks’ notice when rising star maestro Andris Nelsons withdrew unexpectedly, was also loudly cheered for his transparent, light-footed reading of the score.

While the audience stamped and cheered at the end of the evening, professional opera critics gave the staging itself the thumbs down.

Laufenberg transposed Wagner’s medieval tale of the knights of the Holy Grail to the 21st century, setting the action in a bombed-out church in the Middle

10 from an undisclosed battle with cancer.

Kings Cross Theatre in London said that “Lazarus”, a coveted ticket in New LOS ANGELES, July 26, (RTRS): Strong streaming activity helped keep Canadian R&B artist Drake at the top of the weekly US Billboard 200 album chart on Monday for an 11th non-consecutive week.

Drake’s “Views” sold 16,000 albums, 156,000 songs and was streamed 85 million times across platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify, totaling 89,000 album units according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Billboard said “Views” has the most weeks at No. 1 by a male solo artist since Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Some Gave All” in 1992.

The Billboard 200 album chart tallies units from album sales, song sales (10 songs equal one album) and streaming activity (1,500 streams equal one album).

Other acts on Panorama’s final day included Sia, the famously camera-shy Australian songwriter who stood in a far corner with a half-platinum, half-black wig covering her face under a giant bow.

As with her Coachella appearance, Sia left the visual aspect of the music to dancers who emulated her hairstyle.

The performers went from gliding gracefully on stage to mockfighting and awkwardly contorting their faces as Sia sang in her highpowered, raspy voice including her hits “Chandelier” and “Titanium”.

Hip-hop duo Run the Jewels offered one of the more political sets of the festival, performing their antipolice brutality track “Early”.

“Shout-out to the OG Bernie Sanders,” member Killer Mike said, using affectionate hip-hop slang standing for “original gangsta” to refer to the former presidential candidate.

Killer Mike was a prominent campaigner for the socialist senator and, with Sanders out of the race, he led the crowd in chanting an obscenity against Republican candidate Donald Trump.

East, where Christian monks looked after refugees of all creeds.

In a roundtable discussion after the performance, Eleonore Buening from the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung dismissed the imagery as “cheap and cliched”.

“It’s prissy and provincial theatremaking,” she said.

The depiction of the Flowermaidens in the second act, who try to seduce the hero Parsifal, as a Middle Eastern harem reinforced 19th century colonial stereotypes, said Bernhard Neuhoff of Bavarian Radio.

The festival runs from July 25 until Aug 28 with 30 performances of seven different operas.

York even before Bowie’s death, would open October 25 and run until Jan 22.

Directed by Belgian dramatist Ivo van Hove, one of the few non-family members who knew of Bowie’s illness, “Lazarus” will feature much of the New York cast.

Michael C. Hall — best known from the television series “Dexter” — will return in the lead role of Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien who arrives on Earth in search of water and discovers he cannot return as he discovers the delights of alcohol and television. (AFP)

SAN FRANCISCO:

Twitter will live stream for free one Major League Baseball game and one NHL game per week under a new deal.

The agreement announced Monday will allow viewers to watch games nationally that would normally be available only in the two teams’ home markets. Users will not need to be logged into Twitter to see the games. The baseball games will also be available outside the US, with some exceptions. Twitter did not announce the game schedule Monday.

The social media network is attempting to move into live sports streaming through “over-the-top” broadcasts, which do not require a cable subscription. In April, Twitter reached a deal with the NFL to stream 10 “Thursday Night Football” games this fall. (AP)