The title role of “Les contes d’Hoffmann”, Jacques Offenbach’s most ambitious opera, requires an exceptional tenor. The Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam found him in John Osborn. He beautifully shows the sufferings of Hoffmann, the prototype of the German romantic period artist, in the “enormously clever production” (Concerti) by Tobias Kratzer. Among the top vocal cast are Nina Minasyan, Ermonela Jaho and Christine Rice as the three women in Hoffmann’s “tales”. Vocal powerhouse Erwin Schrott sparkles with devilish charisma and Carlo Rizzi excels on the rostrum of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. “Unanimous applause for all!” (NMZ)
La gazza ladra
A feathered thief, a servant wrongly sentenced to death and a corrupt, power-hungry politician: those are the protagonists of Rossini’s semi-serious opera whose overture, with its drum rolls and oboe solo, is one of the best-known pieces in the history of music. La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) is set in a time of great social upheaval. When Ninetta is accused of stealing a silver spoon, a series of unfortunate events begins that initially makes the happy ending expected from an opera semiseria seem highly unlikely. What sort of world is it where a person can be executed for the alleged theft of a spoon? Tobias Kratzer, successful as a director throughout Europe, now debuts in Vienna with Rossini’s opera that received its first performance in 1817 and traces the uncertainty felt by people in a politically and socially destabilised world. “To the left and right, drum rolls sound from the pit, then the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra gets going, effervescent, grand, dense and dark, but at the same time filigree. [The Arnold Schoenberg Choir, Marina de Liso, Maxim Mironov, Fabio Capitanucci and all the others] “sing and play as if they had inhaled Kratzer’s idea of the highly lively, truthful play.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)