Missouri Classical Music News

Barrie Kosky's Wagner is not Wagner's Wagner. The audience at Saturday's new production of "Lohengrin" thought so too.

At the end of a five-hour performance, there was prolonged applause and "bravas" for the soloists, choir, orchestra and conductor. But Kosky, the director, was roundly booed, along with stage and lighting designer Klaus Gruenberg and Alfred Mayerhofer, responsible for costumes.

Most of their work was neither jarring nor controversial. It was worse _ irrelevant, leaving the audience little choice but to concentrate on the mastery of the conductor Semyon Bychkov and the soloists Johan Botha, Soile Isokoski, Falk Struckmann, Janina Baechle, Kwangchul Youn and Adrian Eroed. They _ and an alternately feisty, majestic or tremulous orchestra _ wove a magical musical tapestry.