Dresden and the Staatskapelle Dresden have a special relation to Richard Strauss. Many of his compositions had their world premiere in Dresden and the composer dedicated An Alpine Symphony to the Dresden orchestra. The programme includes Four Last Songs, Ernster Gesang by Wolfgang Rihm and the German premiere of the last completed Strauss song “Mallows” in an orchestral version, arranged specifically for Dresden by Wolfgang Rihm.
Tutto Verdi Highlights
TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances.
“This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
Tutto Verdi – The Operas Vol. 1, 1839 – 1846
Tutto Verdi – The Operas Vol. 2, 1847 – 1853
Otello
TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances. “This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
Verdi was over seventy when he set about raising Italian opera to a whole new level, succeeding magnificently in combining two traditions in his penultimate masterpiece. Based on Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, Otello not only sums up the history of Italian opera since Rossini but at the same time looks far into the future.
Falstaff
TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances. “This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
Based, in part, on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is Verdi’s last work for the stage – and only his second comic opera. And yet the humour in this multilayered masterpiece is distinctly wry, for all the main characters exhibit an array of human weaknesses that are implacably exposed by Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito.
La forza del destino
TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances. “This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
For La forza del destino, Verdi created one of his most famous melodies, the “fate” motif that permeates the whole of the score. Music and action alternate in masterly fashion between large-scale crowd scenes and intimate interiority, in that way illustrating Verdi’s real theme: the manner in which fallible human beings are destroyed by a cruel fate.
Don Carlo
TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances. “This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
Based on Schiller‘s play of the same name, Don Carlos was written for the Paris Opéra in 1865–66 in the tradition of a French grand opera. Repeatedly revised and performed in Italian as Don Carlo, the opera is seen here in the version that Verdi prepared for Modena in 1886. In many respects, this is Verdi’s most ambitious and most forward-looking work.
Aida
TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances. “This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
Commissioned by the Viceroy of Egypt, Aida is Verdi’s only opera to be written for a non-European house. Although set in Egypt in the 19th century BC, it borrows only superficially from the current fashion for exotic subjects but on closer examination emerges as an implacable indictment of nationalism and imperialism.
La Traviata
TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances. “This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
La traviata is Verdi’s most popular opera and one of the best loved of all stage works. Romance, tragedy and unforgettable tunes – this opera has it all. But modern audiences have largely lost sight of the fact that its plot was altogether unprecedented at the time of the work’s composition: with the tale of a highclass prostitute dying of consumption, Verdi raised his fondness for daring subjects to a whole new level.