Norma

“If we weep from emotion on hearing it, it’s nothing to be ashamed of” Richard Wagner on Bellini’s most famous opera Norma, the most successful work by the last and greatest composer of bel canto. This new production of Norma, directed by Grammy Award-nominated opera, theatre and film director Kevin Newbury and starring Sondra Radvanovsky as a “powerful, elegant” Norma (New York Times) and Gregory Kunde as Pollione, is “something very special. The word ‘historic’ is used perhaps a little too often but tonight there really is no other adjective to describe the sensational performances offered to us by Sondra Radvanovsky and Gregory unde.” (operatraveller.com)

Radvanovsky’s performance as Norma has been the fixed point of Newbury’s staging as it has travelled from San Francisco where it opened in September 2014, to Barcelona, and on to Chicago and Toronto, and was enthusiastically received from the off: British Opera magazine described her as “fearless in scaling the heights of this bel canto challenge. Her range of colours, from smoky to crystalline, and her authority […] were wondrous and energizing, starting with a consummately phrased ‘Casta Diva’”.

La Bohème

Puccini’s masterpiece La Bohème is by far the most represented opera in the world. At the famous Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, where Puccini composed his main operas, La Bohème is directed by one of Italy’s greatest film directors: Ettore Scola, the creator of a high number of award-winning seminal films. As he explains in the programme notes, as soon as he was approached to stage La Bohème he had to fight hard to resist the temptation to give life to his “revolutionary” ideas; in the end, he decided for a traditional-looking, rich, grandiose and detailed Bohème. Together with the exceptional cast of Daniela Dessì, Fabio Armiliato, Alessandro Luongo, Alida Berti and Marco Spotti, this production makes for an incomparable great performance.

Faust

Premiered in Paris in 1859, Gounod’s Faust was an instant success and even today remains one of the most popular of all French operas. Its libretto was based on Michel Carré’s adaptation of his own stage play Faust et Marguerite, which in turn was loosely fashioned after Goethe’s two-part tragedy. “The staging was entrusted to a visionary director, Stefano Poda” (La Stampa). “A triumph that will long remain in the annals as one of the most brilliant stagings not only in this theatre but in any of today’s opera houses … An extraordinary spectacle” (ResMusica).

Mosè

For the first time the opera “Mosè” by Gioachino Rossini is on stage inside a Cathedral in a semi-scenic performance at the Duomo di Milano. The Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, in the wake of a centuries-old tradition of dialogue with the contemporary, chooses the most advanced technology to open up to the world and the public with an immediacy never achieved until now, including lights and colors effects that characterize the scenes of the show, with an evocative videomapping technique.

Les Contes d’Hoffmann

Bregenz’s Tales of Hoffmann is different from everything you saw before. The New York Times praised the “thoughtfulness and creativity” of Stefan Herheim’s new production, devised by the director as a search for one’s own self in a sparkling drag show. A “shining-toned” (NYT) Hoffmann is embodied by tenor Daniel Johansson in the title role. He is supported by a fantastic cast: “Rachel Frenkel is positively ideal as Muse and Niklausse” (Kurier), Kerstin Avemo as Olympia is “endowed with brilliant, cheekily extemporized coloraturas” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), Michael Volle sings the parts of Lindorf, Coppélius, Dr. Miracle and Dapertutto, “the work’s four villains, with warmth and intensity” (NYT) and Mandy Fredrich is a “finelyphrased Antonia” (Kurier).

La Traviata

Star tenor and director Rolando Villazón’s staging of La Traviata at the Festspielhaus in Baden Baden is “visually spectacular” (The Huffington Post) and made for “an enthusiastic reception for the premiere” (Stuttgarter Zeitung)! Villazón “proves again his excellent narrating skills on stage” (WDR Klassik). “The setting and opulence of the stage captivates the spectator, as do the stylized costumes designed by Thibault Vancraenenbroeck for circus artists” (Stuttgarter Zeitung). Olga Peretyatko as Violetta delivers “a fantastic portrait of the title role wavering between adolescent joie de vivre, mature insight and anguish” (Stuttgarter Zeitung). Her partner is the tenor Atalla Ayan as the jealous Alfredo, who delivers a “beguiling interpretation with a dark, warm timbre and rich top notes” (Stuttgarter Zeitung). Simone Piazzolla as Alfredo’s strict father Giorgio Germont adds fine vocal lines to provide a strong sense of “Italianità” on stage (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). Conductor is Pablo Heras-Casado, “a great hope of a new generation of conductors” (WDR Klassik).

Der Freischütz

Axel Köhler’s production of Der Freischütz at the Dresden State Opera was described by Die Presse as “a minor miracle in Dresden”. In the words of the Salzburger Nachrichten, Köhler “scored a bulleye” with his sombre and satanic interpretation of Weber’s Romantic opera about love, temptation, souls sold to the Devil, obsession andfaith. According to the Financial Times, Christian Thielemann and the Dresden Staatskapelle conjured up a sense of “mortal terror from the orchestra pit. […] Thielemann is in command of every detail. That makes for utterly gripping listening.”

Aida

Any performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at La Scala, Milan, is guaranteed to be an experience – but, when it’s a new production, it becomes a major event, especially given the theatre’s notoriously critical audience. Legendary stage director Peter Stein succeeds in delivering a lucid production acclaimed in equal measure by the press and public: “a perfect coup de théâtre” (Giornale della musica). A “stellar cast” (La Stampa) contributes to the production’s success under the musical direction of Verdi specialist Zubin Mehta, who leads the orchestra in a “gorgeously colourful performance”, while “the entire ensemble is brilliant in its portrayal of the characters” (Die Presse).

Elektra – staged by La Fura dels Baus

NorrlandsOperan and the Catalan theatre art collective La Fura dels Baus have created a unique monumental outdoor performance of Richard Strauss’s one-act opera Elektra. Cranes, mechanical giants with singers standing inside their chests, skips filled with blood – Elektra is NorrlandsOperan’s biggest and most complex production ever, including many special effects: “Suddenly, the front of the large containers opened up. Bloody water came gushing out in copious amounts. The water level on the graveyard rose and turned red.” (Kulturkorren)

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.