Where the Wild Things Are

Based on Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, one of the world’s best selling and most beloved children’s books, this opera will enchant children and adults alike. To turn his story about a young boy who travels to a faraway island full of wild creatures into an opera libretto, author Maurice Sendak let his imagination run riot. He invented, for instance, a new language for the wild creatures that Max meets on the island. This inspired British composer Oliver Knussen to what is probably his most adventurous music: It whistles, squeaks, sparkles, shines, entices and dances with delightful lightness. This production at the MusikTheater an der Wien “captivates as a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk” (Kurier). With loving attention to even the smallest detail, director and puppet virtuoso Nikolaus Habjan and his team created fabulous life-size puppets for Max and his “wild things”. The singers are in the bodies of the puppets and puppeteers handle the gestures and facial expressions. “The result is a visually stunning round dance of monsters” (Kleine Zeitung).

BBC Proms 2019: Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla conducts Elgar and Weinberg

The CBSO and Music Director Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla celebrate the centenary of Mieczyslaw Weinberg the man Shostakovich hailed as ‘one of the most outstanding composers’ of his day – with a rare performance of his Symphony No. 3, a work that combines folk melodies and dances with confessional urgency. That intensity is shared by Elgar’s passionate Cello Concerto, performed here by 2016 BBC Young Musician winner Sheku Kanneh-Mason. The concert opens with Dorothy Howell’s radiant tone-poem Lamia (first performed, like Elgar’s concerto, 100 years ago) and also includes The Way to Castle Yonder, a suite from the much-missed Oliver Knussen’s opera Higglety Pigglety Pop! “A performance of surpassing delicacy and refinement” (The Telegraph) PROGRAM Weinberg: Symphony No. 3; Elgar: Cello Concerto; Dorothy Howell: Lamia; Knussen: The Way to Castle Yonde