Le nozze di Figaro is Lorenzo Da Ponte’s and Mozart‘s first of their three jointly created operas about attempts at interpersonal relationships: a turbulent comedy with erotic entanglements, which was not a harmless comedy even in Mozart’s day. Director Martin Kušej moves the drama of love and jealousy to a mafia-like urban milieu where conflicts are fought out with pistols. Young French conductor Raphaël Pichon, “original sound expert” (Der Tagesspiegel) and for the first time on the podium of the Wiener Philharmoniker, leads a young ensemble of singers around clan boss Almaviva (“vocally flawlessly brilliant: Andrè Schuen”, Hamburger Abendblatt). “Kušej’s staging is musical, Pichon’s conducting theatrical; the two work together to a degree that is far more rare than it should be. Every detail has been carefully thought through, and the symbiosis is breathtaking.” (Financial Times)
Salzburg Easter Festival 2021: Mozart Requiem
Artistic director Christian Thielemann opens the Salzburg Easter Festival 2021 with Mozart’s Requiem. The excellent Bachelor Salzburg and a top-class quartet of soloists with Golda Schultz, Christa Mayer, Sebastian Kohlhepp and René Pape make the concert a dignified commemoration of the dead. “Mozart’s Requiem sounded at the highest level, with great balance and attention to well-dosed, rather restrained, even reverent sound architecture. Here one realised once again how wonderful it can be when conductor and musicians are so unconditionally attuned to each other.” Kurier. PROGRAM: Mozart Requiem K. 626
Salzburg Festival 2022: Die Zauberflöte
Salzburg stands for Mozart and hardly any work stands for Mozart as much as his Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), the most famous opera of all. Therefore, a staging of Die Zauberflöte at the Salzburg Festival is always something special. Director Lydia Steier in her revised version of her Salzburg production, now placed at the Haus für Mozart, introduces a grandfather as a narrator to read Die Zauberflöte as a bedtime story to his three grandchildren. In this way, the rich fantasy of the work breaks into the strict household of an upper middle-class family, in which reverie has little place, and takes the three boys right into the middle of the action. As the Three Boys, they plunge into a fairy-tale and dream world in whose surreal enlargements the boys’ everyday lives appear again and again. With a childlike gaze, they accompany and guide the protagonists through their destinies. “Regula Mühlemann is a beautiful-sounding Pamina, Michael Nagl a charming, creamy Papageno, and Tareq Nazmi as bass-strong Sarastro turns out to be a stroke of luck.” (Oberösterreichische Nachrichten)
Salzburg Festival 2021: Don Giovanni
Vitality and destruction: Romeo Castellucci sees one of the fascinations of Don Giovanni in this essential ambivalence. In his interpretation of the opera, he penetrates deep into the myth of the character and creates an aestheticised world of fantasy with striking images, such as that of the 150 women, with which he underlines the horror of the title hero’s empty, heartless string of conquests. Musically, there is drama in spades from Currentzis and musicAeterna Orchestra in the pit. Their razor sharp, high-energy approach is clearly an inspiring environment for the largely young cast, too, and results in a terrific performance: “After four long hours of Mozart in Salzburg, one feels refreshed, even invigorated, floating out into the rainy night on clouds of sound and images. Rarely has a team taken Mozart’s genre designation dramma giocoso seriously in such a radically lavish, detailobsessed and conceptually strong way.” Die Zeit / “The most unusual Giovanni the world has ever seen”. Die Welt
Salzburg Festival 2020: Così fan tutte
At Salzburg Festival the new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte is a magic moment in Mozart interpretation, a true feast for the eyes and ears: A masterfully clever staging, a ravishingly young cast and, with Joana Mallwitz, for the first time a woman stands at the podium of the Wiener Philharmoniker for a staged opera production at the Festival. “The sovereignty and prudence with which conductor Joana Mallwitz steers her ensemble and the Wiener Philharmoniker through Mozart’s musical cosmos is phenomenal“, praises BR Klassik, “the orchestra likes to be carried away by her, playing with enthusiasm and brilliance.“ For this shortened version of Mozart´s masterpiece the young conductor joins forces with none other than the internationally renowned director Christof Loy. The celebrated stage director brings unexpected psychological elements to his strikingly modern mise en scène which is coherent down to the smallest detail. On the simple black and white stage, the emotional tragedy takes ist course: The sisters Fiordiligi (sung by stunning French soprano Elsa Dreisig) and Dorabella (beautifully presented by Marianne Crebassa) are subject of a bet made by their betrothed Ferrando (exquisite and sunny voiced Bogdan Volkov) and Guglielmo (hot tempered Andrè Schuen) with Don Alfonso (surprisingly uncynical Johannes Martin Kränzle): true faithfulness would not exist with women. In the end, Don Alfonso should be right and still, this game causes deep wounds for all involved!
Idomeneo
Idomeneo is considered as the first of the seven uncontested masterworks of Mozart’s dramatic œuvre and it is perhaps even the most revolutionary and forward-looking of his work. In “Kasper Holten’s coherent production” (Die Presse) Bernard Richter was “a cultivated bright tenor with beautiful expressive moments” (Kronen Zeitung). “Valentina
Nafornita performed the role of Ilia with passion and reached every height with ease and Irina Lungu portrayed Elettra as a great tragic figure and unfolded her soprano with verve in the final aria” (Kurier). Conductor Tomáš Netopil provided with the orchestra “gripping moments from the virtuoso overture onwards” (Kronen Zeitung).
Salzburg Festival 2019: Idomeneo
After their successfull collaboration for La clemenza di Tito the drm team Peter Sellars and Teodor Currentzis again joined forces to transpose Mozart’s extraordinary opera Idomeneo into the present world. The fabulous Freiburger Barockorchester shines with elegance and precision, and MusicAeterna Choir can rightfully be called “the best choir in the world” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). Chinese lyric soprano and rising star Ying Fang gives her highly acclaimed Festival debut in the role of Ilya, Nicole Chevalier is brilliant as furious Elettra.
Salzburg Festival 2017: Mozart Requiem
Teodor Currentzis and his Russian ensemble musicAeterna give their long awaited Salzburg Festival debut at the Felsenreitschule with an exhilarating interpretation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem. The Greek-Russian star conductor, “visually the rock star amongst all conductors” (Kleine Zeitung), is for many today’s most exciting Mozart conductor. The musicAeterna orchestra and its fabulous choir, completely dressed in solemn black cassocks and afoot throughout the concert, perform with full verve and complement each other perfectly: “compelling and in its greatness hardly comparable” (Kronen Zeitung). The young quartet of excellent soloists – Anna Prohaska, Katharina Magiera, Mauro Peter and Tareq Nazmi – is “smoothly blending in with the ensemble” (Salzburg.com). The “phenomen Teodor Currentzis sets Salzburg on fire!” (Kleine Zeitung)
Harnoncourt conducts Mozart, The Da Ponte Cycle – Don Giovanni
“He was out to create something ‘unheard-of’,” observed conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt beforehand. And true to form: What the conductor had to offer as he commenced his Mozart/ Da Ponte cycle in the Theater an der Wien was something we “had never before heard like this” (Kurier). Nikolaus Harnoncourt, “master” of period performance practice, realized a project that had long been one of his dearest wishes: for the first time, he and his “original-sound orchestra” Concentus Musicus and his personal choice of singers were presenting the complete Mozart/Da Ponte cycle and harvesting the fruits of his Mozart research – an “enthusiastically acclaimed cycle!” (news.at).
Harnoncourt conducts Mozart, The Da Ponte Cycle – Cosí fan tutte
“He was out to create something ‘unheard-of’,” observed conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt beforehand. And true to form: What the conductor had to offer as he commenced his Mozart/ Da Ponte cycle in the Theater an der Wien was something we “had never before heard like this” (Kurier). Nikolaus Harnoncourt, “master” of period performance practice, realized a project that had long been one of his dearest wishes: for the first time, he and his “original-sound orchestra” Concentus Musicus and his personal choice of singers were presenting the complete Mozart/Da Ponte cycle and harvesting the fruits of his Mozart research – an “enthusiastically acclaimed cycle!” (news.at).