Georg Nigl stars in premiere of "Macbeth Underworld"

Georg Nigl as Macbeth (photo: Hugo Segars)

Just four years after the premiere of composer Pascal Dusapin's Penthesilea, he back at the La Monnaie with his newest opera, Macbeth Underworld. The opera is being described as "...a bloodstained Gothic opera, in which the ill-fated couple is condemned to relive its own tragedy, haunting their memory and ours."

Dusapin was less inspired by Shakespeare and Verdi than the cinematic versions of Macbeth for his latest creation, which runs from September 20-October 5. A major inspiration was Roman Polanski’s 1971, a commercial failure that was criticized for its depictions of graphic violence and nudity.

Dusapin knew immediately that he wanted barihunk Georg Nigl for the title role, commenting, "For Macbeth himself it was all much more straightforward. I wanted Georg Nigl. It is my fifth production with him and he can take on anything, from incredible expressiveness through tenderness to absolute folly. The short description on his score just says ‘Macbeth est fou’ – Macbeth is mad. He doesn’t need more than that.”

Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth:

For Lady Macbeth, he drew inspiration from Judi Dench's performance in the 1979 film version. Dusapin said, "Judi Dench was a great model for the scene in which Lady Macbeth washes her hands. The rhythm of her words is spot-on. I copied them out and used them in Macbeth Underworld.”

The remainder of the cast includes Magdalena Kožená as Lady Macbeth,  Graham Clark as Porter and Kristinn Sigmundsson as the Ghost. Tickets are available online.

Georg Nigl stars in Stuttgart's hit opera "Jakob Lenz"

Georg Nigl as Jakob Lenz

One of the hits of Oper Stuttgart's season has been Wolfgang Rihm's one act chamber opera Jakob Lenz starring Georg Nigl. It has one more performance on December 12th, which is completely sold out. Lenz, who along with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, formed the “Sturm und Drang” (Storm and Stress) movement in German literature which made German authors the cultural leaders of Europe during the 18th century.

The opera is based on the novella "Lenz" by Georg Büchner which deals with an incident in the life of the German poet. The source of Büchner's material comes from the diaries of the social reformer and priest Johann Friedrich Oberlin, which detail the activities of his house guest, who was clearly suffering from mental illness at the time.  The suicidal poet stayed with Oberlin in a small village in the Vosges Mountains near the German-French border in the hope of recovering from his depression. 

Georg Nigl as Jakob Lenz

Büchner's opening pages describing the mountain landscape and hinting at Lenz's inner state with the single sentence "he did not feel at all tired, only it sometimes annoyed him that he could not walk on his hands instead of his feet" are reduced to a stage direction, but the rest of the libretto roughly follows Büchner's outline. A key element of the libretto deals with his trauma around the death of a small child whom was he was unable to resuscitate.

The opera was first performed at the Hamburg Staatsoper in 1979 with the late English baritone Richard Salter in the title role. It has subsequently been performed at the Wiener Festwochen with Georg Nigl, Teatro Comunale di Bolgna with Tomas Möwes and the English National Opera with Andrew Shore. 

Watch a preview with Georg Nigl from Stuttgart:

Watch the entire opera with Tomas Möwes from Bologna:

 

At the end of Lenz's life he lived with Goethe's brother-in-law, Johann Georg Schlosser, where he lived in poverty.  After years of increasingly poor physical health and debilitating mental problems, Lenz died on the streets of Moscow 1792.

Austrian baritone George Nigl began his singing career with the famed Vienna Boy's Choir. He went on to study as a baritone and an actor, performing with the Vienna Burgtheater. He has gone on to sing at many of the major opera houses in Europe, including La Scala in Milan, Staatsoper Unter den linden in Berlin, Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, Bolshoi in Moscow, the Festival Aix-en-Provence, the Salzburg Festival and the Wiener Festwochen.

A number of contemporary composers have written works for him, including Pascal Dusapin, Wolfgang Rihm, Friedrich Cerha, Georg Friedrich Haas, Olga Neuwirth, Salvatore Sciarrino, Wolfgang Mitterer, and Peter Eötvös. 

Michael Scarcelle, Vittorio Prato and Ernesto Petti

 Make sure to order your 2015 Barihunks Charity Calendar and enjoy 19 of opera's hottest baritones. 

 

New to Barihunks: Georg Nigl

Nigl today and as a child soloist; As Don Giovanni in center

We recently asked readers to submit names of potential barihunks who haven't appeared on this site before. So far, we've received about 30 submissions, so our original idea of putting our reader submissions into one post flew out the door. A few of them jumped out at us, like Austrian baritone Georg Nigl, who originally made a name for himself as a child soloist with the Vienna Boys Choir. Readers may remember our popular post about Jacques Imbrailo that featured him as a child soloist. 

Here is Nigl singing Mozart's "Laudate Dominum" with the Vienna Boys Choir from Japan in 1986.

Here is Nigl 23 years later singing Henry Purcell's "You twice tne hundred deities," Z.630 wth Luca Pianca on lute.



Nigl has a wide ranging repertory that features Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Mozart’s Papageno and Berg’s Wozzeck. Nigl's biography points out that they are all "human characters with an inherent brokenness."

He has sung at the Teatro alla Scala, Staatsoper Unter dem Linden Berlin, Théâtre de la Monnaie Brussels, Festival Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg Festival and the Vienna Festwochen. He also has released a number of recordings on a variety of labels. He can next be seen at De Nederlandse Opera next month performing Wolfgang Rihm's "Dionysos."

We are still accepting submissions for barihunks who are new to this site. Please send your suggestions to Barihunks@gmail.com.

Nigl in La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein

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