Making a good case for Rienzi
Amidst the abundance of Ring cycles being wheeled out this year, the Wagner bicentenary has also provided a good opportunity to revisit and reconsider many of the composer's earliest works. If any of them is likely to be reevaluated as a misunderstood and neglected masterpiece, it's possibly Rienzi with the promise of that wonderful Overture that asserts itself on occasion like a leitmotif throughout the work. If it never quite manages to live up to what we expect of a Wagner opera though, there are nonetheless fascinating hints of the style that would develop in the composer's later music-dramas and this is something that is brought out very skillfully in this 2012 production from the Thé
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