From the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1990: This effervescent operetta is a perennial favourite and John Cox’s production was a glittering setting for Dame Joan Sutherland’s farewell to The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She received a standing ovation when she appeared as one of the guests in the party scene, together with Luciano Pavarotti and Marilyn Horne. “The gala was surrounded by a really first-rate performance of Fledermaus” (London Evening Standard), with Richard Bonynge conducting a fine cast, including Nancy Gustafson, Louis Otey and Jochen Kowalski.
Wiener Blut
Johann Strauss Jr., known as the “Waltz King”, surpasses all other composers in the history of the operetta with regards to musical inventiveness. With the sparkling temperament and winning charm characteristic of his works, this genial musician brought world fame to the Viennese waltz and made spectacular contributions to the field of operetta. “Vienna Blood” was Strauss’s last work, which he left incomplete at his death. However, thanks to Adolf Müller’s brilliant arrangement, this work has become a fully accepted Strauss operetta, inspired by the brightest of Vienna-waltz spirits and delighting anew at every performance through its wealth of captivating melodies.
Die Fledermaus (The Bat)
The corks pop and the champagne flows in this sparkling production of Johann Strauss’s world-famous operetta with the ensemble of the Bavarian State Opera. Carlos Kleiber conducts Strauss’s music with a temperament, vigor and sensuality that bring to mind contemporary reports on Johann Strauss’s own conducting style: “His whole body was conducting – the hands, head, eyes, torso and feet of the master”. But Kleiber can also invoke another inspired model and predecessor for his interpretation: in 1894, Gustav Mahler conducted the work at the Hamburg Stadttheater, lavishing his usual care and precision on it and paving its way into the repertoire of all major opera houses.
New Year’s Concert 1989
For the 30th anniversary of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s New Year’s concerts, Carlos Kleiber appeared at the conductor’s podium to conduct his first Strauss family extravaganza. “What Carlos Kleiber presents here is the fulfillment of all waltz dreams,” wrote the trade magazine “Fono Forum.” All the beloved Viennese melodies such as the “Fledermaus” overture, the “Accelerationen” waltz, “Bei uns zu Haus,” “Csardas,” “Pizzicato Polka” and, of course, the “Blue Danube” waltz and the “Radetzky March” – all these Viennese warhorses took on an unexpected elegance, spirit and wit. Kleiber’s rubati and accelerandi, his sensitivity towards everything that is found between the staves of the music invest these pieces with a new urgency. Pieces that we thought were so overplayed as to be trite and meaningless assume a freshness and vitality that is nothing less than amazing. “There won’t be anything more beautiful this year,” gushed one of Vienna’s leading dailies – and it was probably right.
Nederlands Dans Theater 3
According to the ancient Greek legend, Prometheus brought fire and culture to mankind, thus saving the world from being destroyed by Zeus. Through the ages, this story has inspired countless artists, poets and musicians to some of their grandest creations.
Christopher Swann’s film is based on a 1993 televised concert from Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall.
The program features music by Beethoven, Liszt, Skriabin and Nono based on the legend of Prometheus. The four compositions could not be more diverse in style and conception, representing highly different approaches: from the Prometheus as bringer of plague and destruction to the punished Prometheus chained to a rock.
In this film, Christopher Swann stresses a visual approach to this variety of ideas, using a number of modern film techniques to underscore and illustrate the musical presentation.
Performances by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Claudio Abbado are first-rate, although it is the presence of Argerich that will make this DVD an obligatory purchase.
Julia Fischer – Violin and Piano
In her January 2008 concert with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie under Matthias Pintscher, Julia Fischer, named ‘Artist of the Year’ in 2007 by the U.K.’s ‘Gramophone’ magazine, did exactly as Bach and Mozart did: she appeared in public as a soloist on two completely different instruments, the violin and the piano. Fischer, who also trained as a pianist, pulled off this rare and risky feat with extraordinary prowess. In Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor op. 61, she weaves her lines seamlessly into the orchestral texture, emerging now with prominent embellishments, now with passionate cantilenas, or withdrawing to let the woodwinds express themselves as equals. For her ‘piano’ part of the evening, Julia Fischer chose the popular Grieg Concerto in A minor op. 16, a warhorse that shares with the previous work an intricate interweaving of the solo and orchestral parts. Commenting on her flawless piano technique and utterly natural artistry on this instrument, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote: ‘She mastered the work with bravura … a more than amazing double talent.’
New Year’s Concert 1992
After this sensational, rousing concert, the most popular event of the year for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the entire Austrian media were unanimous: this was a one-of-a-kind sensation. Broadcast in 25 countries and reaching a potential viewership of a billion viewers and listeners, the concert carried the spirit of Vienna and its most popular son, Johann Strauss Jr., across the entire world. While the waltzes of Johann and Joseph Strauss (as well as an overture by Otto Nicolai) were certainly one reason for the concert’s enormous success, it could not have reached this level of peerlessness without Carlos Kleiber. Known rather as an introspective musician, Kleiber proved in the 1989 New Year’s Concert that he was a master of the light and bubbly as well. All of the works – from the Pizzicato Polka and the Tritsch-Tratsch Polka to the Blue Danube waltz and the Radetzky March – were played with such brilliance, virtuosity and overflowing good spirits that one Vienna daily titled the event “a miracle in 3/4 time.”
Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gipsy Baron)
Next to “Die Fledermaus”, “The Gypsy Baron” is Johann Strauss’s most popular operetta. The libretto gave Strauss the chance to revel in such contrasting musical forms as the csárdás and the Viennese waltz. The style of the lied forms and ensembles is so original and finely balanced that the “Gypsy Baron” can truly be called a comic opera. Among the leading names of the stellar cast are Wolfgang Brendel, Ivan Rebroff, Janet Perry, Ellen Shade, Martha Mödl and, in his debut role, Siegfried Jerusalem as Sándor Barinkay.
Eine Nacht in Venedig
The operetta “Eine Nacht in Venedig” (A Night in Venice) was premiered in Berlin on 2 October 1883; barely a week later the Viennese were also able to celebrate the triumph of a new work by the “Waltz King.” The music of this comic opera perfectly matches the merry, carefree mood of the action. Melodies such as “Komm in die Gondel,” “Ach, wie so herrlich zu schau’n” and “Kommt, kommt, ihr holden Frauen!” are among the high points of the operetta. The stellar cast includes such eminent singers as Anton de Ridder, Sylvia Geszty, Trudeliese Schmidt and, as Ciboletta, Julia Migenes.
Die Fledermaus (The Bat)
Full of fizz and subtle humor, “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat) has become a staple of New Year’s Eve programming in many opera houses around the world. In this sparkling production, director Otto Schenk has freed it from the conventional bonds of the theater, broken it up into fully telegenic, whirling visual sequences, and heightened it with the tumultuous gaiety prescribed by Strauss. Act II, often a stiffly staged ball, has at last become one great hurly-burly, a huge festival, an orgy of swaying figures – drunken or otherwise intoxicated. Foremost among them are the frenzied Eberhard Wächter as Eisenstein, the delicious Renate Holm as Adele and the noble Gundula Janowitz as the long-suffering Rosalinde, who does a magnificent gypsy dance. Competing for the title of show-stealer are fabled Bayreuth tenor Wolfgang Windgassen as Prince Orlofsky and actor-director Otto Schenk himself as Frosch. Karl Böhm leads the Vienna Philharmonic and the Chorus of the Vienna State Opera in this spirited recording.