Museum Mondays

Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Breughel

"Madonna in a Garland of Flowers," 1616/1618, detail

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

July, 2026

 

Well, I'm Back.

What I did on my summer vacation.

The spine without print under Carmen is Werther.

(Click to enlarge.)

I've been back, actually, since August 8; it's just that it took me until the last couple of days to feel thoroughly re-oriented to my usual life. It's as though my five weeks in Europe happened in another realm, and maybe they did, although there are various witnesses to attest that I was really there, friends from different parts of my life, mostly musical connections of one kind or another.

I saw 16 performances in the five weeks I was away. Not readily visible in the photo above, because the programs were small rather than being the size of paperback novella, four performances in Aix: Les vêpres siciliennes, Bluebeard's Castle, Michael Spyres in recital, and Sonya Yoncheva in recital with Cappella Mediterranea.

Amazingly, of these 16, only Bluebeard was a bust, a big surprise considering how good Klaus Mäkelä was conducting Die Frau ohne Schatten. Well, I am sure that Frau got a lot more rehearsal time and took up a lot more of his attention than Bluebeard, but it was a shock anyway. Whatever; it was really a great run of operas and recitals. 

Here are the reviews that've been published so far, as well as some links to others' reviews (more to come). Comments on Mr. Brouček and reviews of the Salzburg operas will be published this week at SFCV.

• The Brilliant Opera Season at Aix-en-Provence, SFCV, August, 2026 (Accabadora, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, Les vêpres siciliennes, Bluebeard's Castle, El Cimarron, recitals by Michael Spyres and Sonya Yoncheva)
• Hugh Canning reviews Frau, Operalogue
• Joshua Barone, NY Times, reviews Frau (gift link)
• David Karlin reviews Frau, Bachtrack
• Alessandro Zummo reviews Frau, Plays to See
• Mark Pullinger reviews Frau, Opera Now
• Kevin Ng inverviews Barrie Kosky about Frau, Parterre Box
• Heidi Waleson reviews Aix, WSJ (paywall)
• A.J. Goldman reviews several Aix productions, Parterre Box
• Shirley Apthorp reviews Accabadora, Financial Times
• General Aix conversation at Parterre Box
• Don't Go in the Basement: Rusalka at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Parterre Box, August, 2026
• Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Der Freischütz at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Parterre Box, August, 2026

Museum Mondays

Paul Klee, Archangel

Lehnbachhaus, Munich

July, 2026

 

Itinerary

Place de la Bastille, Paris

July, 2026

So I am out of town, on a European trip I'm thinking of as the follies of summer 2026, because of the length of the trip (five weeks) and what I am seeing. I'm currently baking in Aix-en-Provence, where temperatures have been in the 90s. Maybe it will actually rain today and cool things off a bit? That would be nice. Also, I should check out the public pool that is less than four blocks from where I'm staying.

Here's where I am, roughly, and what I am seeing or have seen. I'm at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence right now.

• Francesco Filidei, Accabadora, 7 July (world premiere run and very beautiful)

• R. Strauss, Die Frau ohne Schatten,  9 July

• Béla Bartók, Bluebeard's Castle, 11 July (in concert)

• Michael Spyres (recital) 13 July

• Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes aka I vespri siciliani 16 July (in concert; I wish it were staged, but this is a one-off and it's the only middle or late Verdi opera that I have never seen.)

• Henze, El Cimmaron, 17 July

Amusingly, when I was on line for the security check for Accabadora, Barrie Kosky, the director of Frau, floated past me and chatted with some folks about a yard away; when I left Frau the other night, I had just cleared the Grand Theatre steps when Francesco Filidei, composer of Accabadora, crossed my path. I didn't recognize him fast enough to buttonhole him and tell him how much I'd love the opera; he'll just have to wait for my review. Or maybe he'll be at Bluebeard tonight.

The Frau run is ending in a couple of performance and was live streamed the other night when I saw it. It's a collaboration with a couple of European opera companies, so it'll be traveling. It is magnificent, I think the most psychologically compelling of the three productions I have seen since 2013. And there was a lot of great singing as well. (I do not remember much except the glorious orchestra and how loud one Gwyneth Jones was in 1989, with the late Christoph von Dohnyani conducting.)

After Aix, I am spending a few days on the coast in a beach town, hoping to go out on a boat where they give you lunch and you swim in interesting places. I've loved doing this in Hawaii, so.

Then it's on to Munich, where I'm spending eight days and seeing only three operas:

• Rusalka, Dvořák
• The Excursions of Mr. Brouček, Janáček (overnight runout to Bregenz, Austria)
• Der Freischuetz, von Weber

My last major stop is Salzburg (I'll be in Munich the night before I head home):

• Bizet, Carmen 30 July

• Massenet, Werther Aug 1

• R. Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos, Aug

• Messiaen, Saint François d’Assise  4 Aug

• Rossini, Il viaggio a Reims 5 Aug. Also directed by Barrie Kosky, so I have high hopes for this comic rarity. And I will finally see Cecilia Bartoli, who has never sung staged opera in the Bay Area and hasn't given a recital there in decades.

• Mozart, Cosi fan tutte, 6 aug. This will be my fifth Cosi since 2021.

It's a big Strauss year for me, between Daphne (Seattle), Elektra (SFO), Frau (Aix), and Ariadne (Salzburg); also, I'm seeing a few rarities like Brouček and Freischuetz.

How this got started: well, last fall I was thinking back on my many years of opera going and found myself wondering whether I'd ever see the Messiaen again. It left me utterly baffled in 2002, when San Francisco Opera presented the U.S. premiere. (So far it's the only U.S. production of the work.) An idle web search showed me the Salzburg performances; then Aix announced their schedule, and I had to do something in between, right?

Note that there will be radio broadcasts (delayed) of the Aix productions; the schedule is at Parterre Box and note that those times are all Eastern. Add or subtract accordingly. You've missed the livestream of Frau, which was available in Europe unless you have a VPN.

I'm reviewing all of this for SFCV or Parterre Box, so watch for links, eventually.

Photos from Germany

Friedensengel, Munich

I mentioned elsewhere that I somehow managed to take about 1200 photos in 17 days in Germany, which surprised me, as I did not lug around my dSLR all the time.

I've started posting them on Flickr, breaking them down as best I can. So, I am not uploading 120 photos from the Bavarian State Museum in one huge album; I'm breaking them down into several different topics.

You can see the collection (a listing of the albums) right here. Rest assured, there will be some kind of best-of collection of maybe 50 photos, for those of you who would like the highlights version.

Monday Bust

Tower of the Deutsches Museum

So Monday was not much of a day in Munich. I decided to walk a couple of miles to the Deutsches Museum, the city's enormous museum of science and technology, remembered fondly by friends who've been there as either adults or children. And so I did, despite intermittent drizzle, meandering all the way, past the university on Ludwigstrasse, past the Residenz, past the Bayerische Staatsoper, past lots of things, taking photos at Dallmayer's, the Viktualienmarkt (where I bought nothing except a bowl of mediocre soup), and everything else at all interesting.

Alleged Vienna-style goulash

At least the cabbages were cute.

And....there was a line of a couple of hundred people, stretching far down from the entrance, and somebody told me that there was a two-hour wait to get into the Deutsches Museum. No, I did not have enough left in my feet to wait that long, so I turned around and headed back.

I crossed the river, and a few blocks later found a grocery store, so I went in and bought some things. And then I made a bad mistake: I hadn't brought a bag from the apartment, and I bought a coated paper bag instead of a heavy-duty plastic bag. Right by the Isartor, even though I'd kept the bag under my poncho, the bag of course fell apart.

I managed to distribute most of its contents to my pockets and purse, and wrapped up what was left in the remains of the bag. I got onto the S Bahn at Isartor and was back at the apartment pretty quickly, but my side was sore from carrying the wrapped up bag, and I was tired and sorry that I hadn't gotten to a museum.

So I hung around and read for the rest of the day and into the evening.

Updated, with photos: 8/21/2015

Alte Pinakothek

So when I draggled out of bed Sunday just past noon, the question was where to go: to what Alex Ross described in a comment as the "daft Stuck House museum" or the Alte Pinakothek, Munich's Old Master gallery.

The Alte Pinakothek won, largely because it is closer to my apartment in Schwabing and I did not know how long I would last walking around. The building has been under renovation for some time, and the renovations will continue until 2017 or 2018, and so something like a quarter or more of the collection is inaccessible. What's left covers roughly the 15th to 17th centuries; I did not see a lot from before, say, 1450. Most of it is German, though there's a good helping of Italian and Dutch work in there as well. I saw some Van Dyke painting, but not a single Rembrandt, and I'm guessing that most of the Dutch masters are in the rooms currently under renovation.

My overall impression is that it's an excellent collection, but I was not left gaping as I was when I saw the Uffizi Gallery's early collection in Florence in 2004. That is a collection of uncommon splendor.

Not that there aren't a whole lot of fine paintings; there are. I was particularly struck by the flowing overall architecture and beautiful individual paintings of the Kaisheim altarpiece by Hans Holbein the Elder, with the inner and outer views hung on the same wall. These are enormous, probably 15 or so feet high, and beautifully painted. There's another magnificent altarpiece, by a different artist, in the same room.

But I also saw some very odd details, like the Fathers of the Church altarpiece where the heads of two of the fathers look as though they were pasted onto the bodies, and where two of the fathers have hands that look like they were painted by a studio apprentice who didn't quite understand how fingers and wrists work anatomically.

Then there's the roomful of Titians and Tintorettos: every painting in that room has such dull colors that I wondered whether they are in need of a good cleaning. And...well, after the 25th crucifixion or scene from the life of the Virgin Mary, it does get to be a bit of thematic overkill.

I did love a few of the paintings in the gallery. The smallish Durer self-portrait is a marvel of intensity and directness, and what a beautiful young man he was. In a room adjacent to it, there's the exceptionally beautiful Lippi Annunciation, so much lighter in spirit than the many weighty German paintings.

And a few paintings to right of the Lippi, I nearly fainted when I caught sight of a small Virgin and Child, because I had not realized the museum had a Leonardo. I did not need to see the label to know what I was looking at; there was simply no mistaking who the artist was. It is the Madonna of the Carnation, so called because Mary is amusing the Christ child with a small red flower. Seeing it immediately put everything else in the museum into a particular odd perspective, that of an excellent collection in which a single painting seems to overwhelm everything else.