„In the midst of chaos, how do you find peace?“, is one of the pressing topical questions that Joyce DiDonato asks in her powerful work In War & Piece – Harmony through Music. The Grammy Award winning mezzo-soprano fashions an intense semi-theatricalized concert production, including works by George Frideric Handel and Henry Purcell. Organizing a set of Baroque arias along thematic lines, DiDonato contemplates the interwoven worlds of external conflict and serenity, internal war and peace, and the challenges which they provide for every citizen of the world. Together with the period-instrument ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro under Maxim Emelyanychev, the singer creates a dramatic atmosphere on the stage of the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. In the music of Handel, DiDonato achieves a “purity that enhances the composer’s signature formula” (Washington Post).
Le lacrime di Eros
“A panopticon of emotions” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) This one-of-a-kind production explores “the dark sides of love” with a pasticcio of Renaissance pieces centered around Claudio Monteverdi, his predecessors and contemporaries. Dreamed up by director Romeo Castelucci and conductor Raphaël Pichon, Le lacrime di Eros occupies a space between opera and performance art, marrying a mosaic of Renaissance compositions with electronic music by Scott Gibbons and presenting it in a series of scenes that are visually stunning, yet disturbing: “There is not a second of this show that is not perfectly beautiful: composition, colours, choice of costumes, lighting…” (Classique News) and Pichon “conjures the most beautiful colours from his orchestra” (Trouw). Pichon’s ensemble Pygmalion and the excellent soloists leave nothing to be desired: “Pygmalion has a sound that you must hear at least one: it bursts with lust for life” (nrw).
Monteverdi Cycle from Berlin: Orpheus
Monteverdi’s La Favola d’Orfeo is acknowledged as the very first opera, his three surviving complete operas are accordingly right at the start of operatic history, and yet Berlin’s Komische Oper has succeeded in making these three works “so modern and thrilling” that, as Bayerischer Rundfunk said, “the 400 intervening years sometimes seemed to have been eliminated”. In a stage production by Barrie Kosky and a new instrumentation by the Tashkent-born, internationally successful composer Elena Kats-Chernin, conductor André de Ridder presents a brilliantly selected ensemble, comprising 32 soloists and a supporting cast of over 200. The electrifying curtain-raiser is Orpheus, compelling as a rich feast of the senses in a lush blooming stage Arcadia, peopled by a fantastic company of nymphs and satyrs. Amid joyful song and captivating dance interludes, the mythical singer’s passionate young love for Eurydice blossoms till its tragic end at her death.
Monteverdi Cycle from Berlin: Odysseus
Odysseus on is a character study with moving moments. A man weary of wandering and a waiting wife at home long for one another, only to find it hard to approach each other again after years of separation.
Monteverdi Cycle from Berlin: Poppea
The highlight of the idiosyncratic orchestration and direction comes in Poppea with a glorification of immorality that is almost unbelievable from a composer who was a priest. In a bleak rocky landscape, the innocence of Arcadian love is perverted into naked lust, degraded to an unrestrained exercise of brutality and arbitrary power.
Vienna Boys Choir – 525th Anniversary Concert
Boys have been singing at Vienna’s “Hofburgkapelle” since 1296. In 1498, the future Emperor Maximilian I moved his court and court music from various residences to Vienna. In doing so, he had laid the foundation for the Wiener Hofmusikkapelle and eventually also for the Wiener Sängerknaben (The Vienna Boys Choir). In this festive jubilee concert at Vienna’s Musikverein celebrating the 525th anniversary of the choir, the Wiener Sängerknaben and all choirs associated to it, the Chorus Primus, the Wiener Chormädchen, the Chorus Juventus and the “alumni” forming the Chorus Viennensis, are singing works that are all especially related to the choir – by Ludwig Senfl and Josquin Desprez, the Strauss dynasty or also by Mozart, Haydn and Bruckner, some of them recorded for the very first time.
Salzburg Festival 2020: Sonya Yoncheva sings baroque arias
Contemplative, dramatic, spirited, lively – and all these facets united by absolute beauty and perfection: This describes the Baroque Evening in Salzburg’s Haus für Mozart. Sonya Yoncheva dedicated her recital to 17th- and 18th-Century music, together with Argentinian conductor Leonardo García Alarcón and his Cappella Mediterranea, all renowned specialists in baroque music. Vocal and instrumental music by Monteverdi, Purcell, Cavalli, Dowland and many others enchants the public – and a surprise, when Sonya Yoncheva proves with an encore how much Folk & Pop and Baroque music have in common… “Bulgarian Sonya Yoncheva currently has one of the most sensual soprano voices in the world of opera. Yoncheva stirs and soothes, with delicately sparkling melodic jewels of Stradella, Monteverdi, Cavalli and Caldara, but also with Spanish, Gibbons, Dowland and Purcell” Die Welt
Red Ribbon Celebration Concert 2016 – Orpheus and Eurydice
On the occasion of the Red Ribbon Celebration Concert, Vienna’s famous charity concert for the benefit of HIV and AIDS aid projects, some of the world’s greatest opera stars made their appearance at the venerable Burgtheater. Anna Netrebko, Piotr Bezcala, Juan Diego Flórez and Thomas Hampson took part in this festive concert evening which revolved around the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. With excerpts from corresponding operas by Claudio Monteverdi and Christoph Willibald Gluck, works by W. A. Mozart and Franz Liszt, the audience is taken on Orpheus’ journey to the underworld, from where he desperately tries to take his love Eurydice back to the world of the living by the help of his singing.
Claudio Monteverdi: Vespro della beata vergine
A piece of music as a ticket: his Vespers of Mary brought Claudio Monteverdi an engagement in Venice, where he made musical history as Kapellmeister of St Mark’s Cathedral. A one-way ticket, as it later turned out, but he remained loyal to this city and contributed to making it a magnet for composers and musicians from all over Europe. After his debut at Whitsun 2016, it was clear: Pablo Heras-Casado absolutely has to come back! Finally, the time has come: the star conductor once again took the podium of the Barocktage Residence Orchestra. Together with the Concentus Musicus Wien, a select cast of singers and the Ensemble Aedes he opened the International Baroque Days Stift Melk 2021 with Monteverdi’s gigantic work!
Stravaganza d’Amore!
Late sixteenth-century Florence was a theatre: first and foremost a political one, in the eyes of the dynasties that wished to use the arts to display their power. A humanist one too, as is shown by these intermedi (interludes) that sought to achieve the perfect blend between music and poetry. Inserted into plays these entertainments were presented with lavish visual and musical resources. After reaching an initial peak in 1589 with the intermedi composed for Baragli’s La Pellegrina, this tradition was prolonged in the burgeoning genre of opera by such composers as Peri, Caccini, and, very soon, Monteverdi and Gagliano. Rather than aiming for the impossible ideal of a reconstruction, Raphae¨l Pichon has devised a sort of imaginary intermedio by selecting the nest gems from this repertory, featuring the gures of Apollo, Orpheus and Eurydice, and above all Cupid: Love, Love, Love!