German conductor Ingo Metzmacher was appointed General Music Director of the Hamburg Opera in 1997, where he conducted a series of internationally acclaimed productions, many of them in collaboration with Stage Director Peter Konwitschny, over eight seasons. “Der Freischütz” was one of the highlights of their collaboration. The German opera magazine “Opernwelt” voted the Hamburg Opera House “Opera House of the year 2005”.
Fierrabras
Fierrabras of 1823 is the last of Franz Schubert’s stage works. Rarely performed to this day, this heroic-romantic opera has now been staged for the first time ever at the Salzburg Festival by famous director Peter Stein. Based on an old French 12th-century epic, the plot depicts the military conflict between Christians and Moors at the time of Charlemagne – as a backdrop to stories of love and friendship that prove to be stronger than war and hatred of otherness.
The strong cast includes the “marvellously expressive miracle Dorothea Röschmann” (Die Zeit) and “Michael Schade, who exudes his exceptional tenor in Fierrabras’s heroic arias” (Der neue Merker). Under the energetic baton of lngo Metzmacher, the Vienna Philharmonic unfold “the melos, the poetry, the sweetness and the dramatic force of Schubert’s highly refined and atmospheric sound worlds” (Kleine Zeitung) in highly romantic fashion.
Ingo Metzmacher conducts Hans Werner Henze’s Requiem
Few modern composers had a more meaningful relationship with both past and (very real) present than Hans Werner Henze – or a more acute ear for beauty. His Requiem of 1993 is simultaneously typical and utterly original: nine wordless concertos for trumpet, piano and a shimmering chamber orchestra, each charged (in Henze’s own words) “with the human fears and problems of our time, with illness and death, love and loneliness”. This film captures the world premiere performance in Frankfurt in February 1993, with Ueli Wiget on piano and the incomparable Håkan Hardenberger on trumpet – a landmark in postwar musical history.
Modern Masterworks: John Cage
Few figures of 20th-century music were as innovative, iconoclastic and controversial as John Cage, a composer who asked fundamental about the nature of music and art. When he died in 1992, a festival of his music scheduled in Frankfurt took on the character of a celebration of his life and art. The performances featured here are drawn from that festival, with David Tudor – Cage’s friend and musical partner for over 40 years – performing two of the composer’s major concert works, accompanied by Ensemble Modern and conductor Ingo Metzmacher. The performances are preceded by an introduction to Cage and his work by Michael Nupen.
Salzburg Festival 2020: Camerata Salzburg & Metzmacher
“An insane program … A fascinating and crazy border crossing, never in danger of falling. And the audience is cheering” Die Welt. PROGRAM Ligeti: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Ligatura-Message to Frances-Marie (The Answered Unanswered Question), Op. 31b, “Ruhelos” from Kafka-Fragmente, Op. 24; Nörmiger: Toden Tanz from Tabulaturbuch auff dem Instrumente; Anonym: Byzantine Chant on Psalm 140; Schubert: String Quartet No. 14, D. 810 “Der Tod und das Mädchen”; Dowland: Pavane “Lachrimæ Antiquæ Novæ” for String Quintet from Lachrimæ, or Seaven Teares
Salzburg Festival 2025: The Raft of the Medusa
Henze’s Das Floß der Medusa is one of the most significant political works of 20th-century music. Inspired by Géricault’s painting, it recounts the true story of the 1816 shipwreck of the French frigate Méduse, in which 154 people were abandoned on a raft while those in power saved themselves. Since its premiere, it has stood as a powerful symbol of artistic resistance and remains strikingly relevant today. Henze’s haunting music, which gives voice to the victims of the shipwreck, is performed in Salzburg to perfection: “The ORF RSO Vienna and the choirs perform the piece brilliantly, as does the solo trio, through all the extremes of expression, which, after a sombre woodwind elegy, reach their climax in the finale. Pure horror takes orchestral form” (Der Standard). “Outstanding choirs” (Salzburger Nachrichten)
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 2021: Intolleranza 1960
Luigi Nono caused a riot at the premiere of his “scenic action” Intolleranza in 1961. The opulent work that collages singing, orchestra, film projections, dance and light has lost none of its actuality, neither in its form nor in its content: the odyssey of a nameless emigrant who is persecuted and tortured ends fatally in the floods of the river that separates him from his homeland. Jan Lauwers’ production in the impressive Felsenreitschule reflects his intense study of the meaning of political art. For Nono expert, conductor Ingo Metzmacher, Nono’s work and legacy are like a guideline that he still follows today. The performers and dancers of the NEEDCOMPANY, the BODHI PROJECT und SEAD – Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance create images of oppressive intensity in teeming tableaux. “The cast is superb, from Sean Panikkar’s eloquent, impassioned immigrant to Musa Ngqungwana’s harrowing torture victim.” Financial Times
Salzburg Festival: Schubert, Fierrabras
“A revelation” wrote the NRC Handelsblad about Schubert’s rarely heard heroic-romantic opera Fierrabras, one of the highlights of Salzburg Festival 2014. The work, based on a libretto by Josef Kupelwieser after the old French epic Fierabras, is lead by director Peter Stein and conductor Ingo Metzmacher.
Dionysos
It was a daring enterprise in every respect. A work of music drama that the composer Wolfgang Rihm had carried about with him for more than 15 years – its premiere already postponed three times – was now to be committed to paper in a matter of weeks. A production team that had to plan to a tight deadline before the piece was even in existence – rehearsals began a week after composition was completed – was faced with a highly artificial text: Nietzsche’s late “Dionysos dithyrambs”, the last poetic thoughts of the philosopher, published shortly before his breakdown.