Requiring 38 soloists, chorus and large orchestra, “Palestrina”, Hans Pfitzner’s (1869-1949) “most important work” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), is a challenging opera to stage. In Munich, the city in which it was given its world premiere in 1917, the Bavarian State Opera succeeded – director Christian Stückl, best known for his staging of the Oberammergau Passion Play and the Salzburg Festival’s “Jedermann”, transformed the monumental work into an optical pop art event. Stückl’s production infuses such color and life into the serious work that even the German tabloid “Abendzeitung” delightedly wrote: “Who would have thought that Pfitzner could be such fun?”
Reimann, Lear
Australian-born Simone Young is internationally recognised as one of the leading conductors of her generation. In 2005 she took up the post of General Manager and Music Director of the Hamburgische Staatsoper and Music Director of the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg, where she’ winning high praises for her interpretation of a repertoire ranging from Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Strauss, to Hindemith, Britten and Henze .“In Aribert Reimann’s Shakespearean opera Lear Simone Young kindled again that fascinating, shimmering colour spectrum between threatening gloom and gleaming lustre, with which she can also beguile in Wagner, Strauss and Verdi.” (NZZ)
Le Concert de Paris 2021
It is now a well-established tradition: every year, on July 14, the Orchestre National de France welcomes the summer with a large musical gathering at the foot of the Eiffel Tower with stunning fireworks. Conducted by Simone Young, and accompanied by the Chorus of Radio France, the orchestra invites the audience around the world, to experience great arias and famous concert pieces in the company of prestigious soloists like Pretty Yende, Piotr Beczala, Renaud Capuçon, Ksenija Sidorova, Clementine Margaine, and Ibrahim Maalouf!