In Palermo where Richard Wagner composed this monumental opera during a long stay, conductor Omer Meir Wellber makes a highly successful debut as music director of Palermo’s Teatro Massimo, architecturally and artistically one of Italy’s most impressive opera houses. “With the Teatro Massimo’s excellent orchestra he succeded in a reading that was absolutely straight forward” (Opera Today). The singers are excellently cast especially Julian Hubbard as Parsifal “who was a sensation” (neue musikzeitung). Stage director “Graham Vick strips Parsifal of mysticism to deliver a powerful indictment of divisive ideologies” (Musical America).
Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades)
From the Glyndebourne Festival Opera 1992: Producer Graham Vick, designer Richard Hudson, conductor Sir Andrew Davis, the London Philharmonic and the full cast of singers won unanimous critical acclaim for their revelatory interpretation of this mesmeric and psychologically harrowing work. Hudson’s eighteenth-century costumes are sumptuously realistic, while his set is abstract and modern. The cast features three top Russian singers – Sergei Leiferkus, Dimitri Kharitonov and Yuri Marusin. Nancy Gustafson, Felicity Palmer and Louise Winter also won high praise for their performances in this “marvellous and brilliant piece of modern music-theatre” (Financial Times). (Sung in Russian)
Parsifal
In the magnificent Teatro Massimo in Palermo, British stage director Graham Vick and Israeli conductor Omer Meir Wellber bring Richard Wagner’s last opera Parsifal in a suspenseful interpretation to the stage. In this Parsifal, the myth of the Holy Grail is woven into real-life events, a parable of the suffering of those who flee war and conflict zones to freedom. Omer Meir Wellber makes a highly successful debut as music director in Palermo where Richard Wagner composed this monumental opera during a long stay. The singers are excellently cast, above all a passionately singing Julian Hubbard as Parsifal and Tomas Tomasson embodies Amfortas superbly as a glorified prophet figure. “Graham Vick strips Parsifal of mysticism to deliver a powerful indictment of divisive ideologies” (Musical America); “Julian Hubbard as Parsifal is a sensation” (neue musikzeitung)