Macbeth

With its relentless dramatic continuum, Macbeth, Verdi’s early masterpiece and his tenth opera (premiered in Florence on 14 March 1847) rescued the composer from a creative crisis. In Macbeth Verdi created a successful synthesis of music and drama on which he was to guide himself from now on. Director Claude d’Anna and conductor Riccardo Chailly chose the version which Verdi prepared for Paris and was premiered there on 21 April 1865. As to the apparitions and supernatural aspects of the work, d’Anna says that he always “tried to find theatrical rather than cinematic solutions. … Solutions had to result from the work’s own symbolic logic, not simply from technology.”

3 Stars in Vienna

Bathed in the warm light of the setting sun, Vienna’s imperial Schönbrunn Palace provides a romantic setting for this open-air concert held shortly before the final match of the Euro 2008 football championship. And shining even more brightly than the palace are the stars of the evening, Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazón and Plácido Domingo. The trio’s first joint concert, given at Berlin’s Waldbühne for the 2006 football World Cup, was recorded by UNITEL CLASSICA and awarded the Platinum DVD for sales of over 50,000 DVDs in Germany and over 100,000 worldwide. The Schönbrunn concert also broke records with 3.3 million viewers watching the concert live or deferred in Germany and Austria.

Salzburg Festival 2023: Macbeth

With his Macbeth, Giuseppe Verdi broke with the operatic conventions of the time and created one of his darkest and most abysmal works. Directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski, the timeless drama unfolds in a new interpretation that takes the audience on an intense journey into human abysses. An opera of this kind demands not only outstanding voices but also outstanding actors. “Vladislav Sulimsky is forceful and brutish in the title role, at times truly frightening, always utterly assured.” (Financial Times) Asmik Grigorian is giving her debut as Lady Macbeth and performs “with an urgency of expression that needs no further explanation.” (Salzburger Nachrichten) “Her singing becomes a victory over expressive resistance.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine) “Philippe Jordan celebrated a triumph on the podium of the Wiener Philharmoniker” (Kurier), his “Macbeth crackles with power and electricity, propelled by its own velocity. The orchestra attacks the score with relish.” (Financial Times)

Bregenz Festival 2023: Ernani

Six years before Rigoletto, Giuseppe Verdi had already composed a gripping drama about love and revenge: Ernani – his breakthrough as a composer. The opera was also based on a play by the French author Victor Hugo, whose text inspired Verdi’s unique style with moving arias, stirring choruses and scenes of high drama: Elvira is desired by three men – among them the Spanish king and her old uncle. But she loves the robber Ernani, of all people, who has a score to settle with the king… “As much as this brilliant and precisely executed evening is always one over, it cleverly always moves just below the caricature threshold. Scurrilous drama, bizarre humour and splatter comedy serve only one thing: the unmasking of the guys.” (Münchner Merkur); “A mixture of Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ and Monty Python’s ‘The Knights of the Coconut’.” (Deutschlandfunk)

Salzburg Festival 2023: Falstaff

Falstaff is Giuseppe Verdi’s third opera based on a Shakespeare play and the last opera he composed. Designed as a comedy of errors, it illustrates the abysses of human inadequacies. Christoph Marthaler, “that wondrous theatre magician” (Tiroler Tageszeitung), stages the comedy as a tongue-in-cheek Orson Welles homage, who himself

impersonated and filmed “Falstaff” in 1965, and moves the action from Windsor around 1400 to a chaotic film set of the 1960s: a confusion of identities and genres. “Avantgardiste conductor and Falstaff debutant Ingo Metzmacher gave his Falstaff orchestra the ride of its life. It was mighty and infectious.” (operatoday.com) The Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley in the title role is convincing with his “magnificent playing marked by precise laconism” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), Russian soprano Elena Stikhinas in the role of Alice “enchants with heavenly heights” (Südwest Presse). “Creative and innovative” Kurier

Salzburg Festival 2019: Simon Boccanegra

Giuseppe Verdi’s emotional political thriller, brilliantly captured in Andreas Kriegenburg’s puristic staging, becomes a musical feast in Salzburg with a high-class ensemble including René Pape, Luca Salsi, Marina Rebeka and Charles Castronovo. Conductor Valery Gergiev gives a “musically differentiated and overall convincing interpretation of Verdi’s sonically immensely subtle score” (Die Zeit). The Wiener Philharmoniker and the choir of the Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor perform superbly.

Bregenz Festival 2019: Rigoletto

Bregenz Festival staged for the first time Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece Rigoletto – compelling, blood-curdling and beautiful. The stage and film director Philipp Stölzl (Medicus & Goethe), known for his successful productions in Salzburg as well as for his music videos for Madonna or for the German band Rammstein, created a spectacular setting on the world’s largest stage on a lake, praised by critics as a unique technological masterpiece. The staggering show has attracted not only 200,000 visitors to 20 sold out performances but also close to 2 million TV-viewers in Germany, Austria and Swiss alone. “This Rigoletto on Lake Constance becomes a Hollywood spectacle.” (Handelsblatt); “The performance of the three main characters has been outstanding.” (Der Standard)

Salzburg Festival 2017: Aida

“Passionate and unconditionally dedicated” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), Anna Netrebko makes her role debut as Aida at the Salzburg Festival, joined by Francesco Meli as Radamès and Ekaterina Semenchuk as her rival Amneris. In the pit: no other than Verdi expert Riccardo Muti, “our finest Verdi conductor” who “creates effects you didn’t quite think possible” (NY Times). This Aida is the first opera staging by award-winning Iranian film-maker, photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat, known for her critical examinations of gender roles and religious fundamentalism. “Lyric sensitivity and searing power – Ms. Netrebko is ready for Aida!” (New York Times)

Salzburg Easter Festival 2016: Otello

A superb new Otello from the Salzburg Easter Festival: “Cura is a commanding Otello with his richly coloured tenor and both fragile delicacy and fiery ardour” (Südwestpresse). “Röschmann as Desdemona guarantees effortless perfection” (Neue Musikzeitung). “Álvarez as Iago would be hard to surpass” (Abendzeitung). Thielemann”has discovered an impressively modern sound for Verdi” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), “generating Italian ‘Musikdrama’ with their incandescence and precise nuances” (Abendzeitung). In his fascinating staging, director Vincent Broussard integrates video with set and lighting design to create an idealized visual context for what he calls Otello’s “conflict of ancient and modern, of 2D and 3D”.