One of opera’s most beautiful masterpieces, Gluck’s exquisite drama introduces us to Orpheus, the poet and musician whose every word and note communicate the most overwhelming love for his Eurydice. Lyric presents Orphée et Eurydice in the Paris version, which contains thrilling ballet sequences that will come to vivid life under the direction and choreography of the legendary John Neumeier. Lyric’s production stars Dmitry Korchak as Orphée with Andriana Chuchman as Eurydice and Lauren Snouffer as Amour. The Chicago Tribune deemed the production “triumphant” and “miraculously fresh and alive.” The production features Gluck’s reworking of the original German opera into a French-language production featuring ballet. “To hear [Gluck’s] songful art pour out uninterrupted…[is] to understand the overwhelming power of melody.” (The New York Times)
Così fan tutte
Who loves whom in Così fan tutte, Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s cruelly comic reflection on desire, fidelity and betrayal? Or have the confusions to which the main characters subject one another ensured that in spite of the heartfelt love duets and superficially fleetfooted comedy nothing will work any longer and that a sense of emotional erosion has replaced true feelings? Così fan tutte is a timeless work full of questions that affect us all. The Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke once said that he was merely being precise and did not want to distort reality. In only his second opera production after Don Giovanni in 2006, he presents what ARTE described as a “disillusioned vision
of love in an ice-cold, realistic interpretation”. And according to the online version of ZEIT, six “fabulous vocal soloists cast from 120 international applicants” bring gentle melancholy and moving vulnerability to Haneke‘s radical staging.
Die Zauberflöte
What begins like a fairy-tale turns into a whimsical fantasy halfway between magic farce and Masonic mysticism: The Magic Flute links a love story with the great questions of the Enlightenment, juxtaposes bird-catcher charm with queenly vengeance, and bewitches the listener with music that mixes cheerful melodies, lovers’ arias, show-stopping coloraturas and mysterious chorales. W. A. Mozart’s opera premiered in 1791 and is one of the most often performed operas in the world. The production on the Bregenz Festival lake stage impresses the audience with a fantastic setting framed by three dog-dragons, each of them more than twenty meters in height. “David Pounty finds stunning answers to the everlasting questions surrounding ‘The Magic Flute’. (Tagesspiegel); “The ‘play on the lake’ in Bregenz takes the audience into a fantasy world.” Salzburger Nachrichten
La Sonnambula
Premiered in Milan on 6 March 1831, La Sonnambula is regarded as Bellini’s first true masterpiece. The opera teils the story of Amina, who is to marry Elvino, but sleepwalks into the room of Count Rodolfo the night before her wedding. Upon hearing of this deplorable incident, Elvino calls off the wedding. Although Rodolfo confirms her innocence, Elvino remains steel-hearted, until Amina sleepwalks again… This new production of La Sonnambula dazzles with lovingly detailed and imaginative sets which repro duce a Swiss alpine resort in the 1930s (Bellini hirnself set the action in a Swiss village). Complete with a majestic mountain panorama, a cable car and a grand salon, not to mention the colorfully dressed resort guests, the settings deploy an enchanting picture book of visual surprises. Director Bepi Morassi interweaves subtle details that reflect the social realities of today, such as a marriage contract. ..
Der Ring des Nibelungen in 7 hours
Is it possible to stage Wagner’s Ring on a single day? After a difficult production process, the Teatro Colón has triumphantly succeeded in bringing to life and to the stage the abridged version by pianist and conductor Cord Garben – clocking in at just under seven hours. With the help of a superlative cast of Wagner singers, director Valentina Carrasco, famous for her work with La Fura dels Baus, has transposed the plot into the 1970s – the period of Argentina’s military dictatorship. However, the music remains pure and majestic Wagner, skilfully and faithfully condensed into a revolutionary format. The documentary included provides a thrilling account of the epic creative journey that took
the Colón Ring from its inception to the opening night.
“Linda Watson‘s Brünnhilde outshines everything.” FAZ
“In the end the Wagner venture in Buenos Aires succeeded after all.” Die Welt
Eugene Onegin
In his first year as Music Director of Valencia’s Palau de les Arts, the exciting young conductor Omer Meir Wellber scored a triumph with Tchaikovsky’s beloved opera Eugene Onegin. In Mariusz Trelinski’s timeless production, consisting of a series of surrealist tableaux of great suggestive beauty, he leads a dream team of rising opera stars headed by Artur Rucinski as Onegin and Kristine Opolais as Tatyana. “An ideally well-balanced vocal cast” (Die Welt).
La vida breve
A national monument in Spain, Manuel de Falla’s La vida breve is perhaps the greatest opera ever written in the Spanish language. A kind of “tragic zarzuela”, it unites verismo atmosphere, Andalusian local colour and a score shimmering with reminiscences of French Impressionism. Written in 1905, La vida breve is the story of a poor gypsy and her lover, who is engaged to wed a wealthy girl. “Simply a stroke of genius”, wrote Spain’s Opera Viva about Giancarlo del Monaco’s austere, minimalist staging at Valencia’s Palau
de les Arts Reina Sofía. Maestro Lorin Maazel, whom El País hailed as the “triunfador” of the evening, leads an exquisite array of soloists headed by Chilean soprano Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Jorge de León and María Luisa Corbacho.
Falstaff
“Everything in this world is a joke,” says Falstaff, and these words are truly given weight by Ambrogio Maestri, one of the finest Falstaffs of our time. The Italian baritone brings a powerful, versatile voice to his role, but also brings to his character a hilarious buffo quality. Daniele Gatti, one of the most acclaimed opera conductors working today, leads a stunning cast of singers, including Barbara Frittoli as Alice Ford. Genuinely warm italianità in all of the music-making, combined with a boisterous production by stage director Sven-Eric Bechtolf, turns Verdi’s commedia lirica into a fireworks display of high spirits as well as what the Neue Zürcher Zeitung called “musically and dramaturgically a feast of life and of love of life”.
Orfeo ed Euridice
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the small but ambitious Castell de Peralada Festival, the famous Catalan theatre collective La Fura dels Baus and its director Carlus Padrissa staged Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. A splendid cast as well as an avant-garde production that makes extensive use of large projection screens and includes the members of the orchestra as actors onstage result in one of the most exciting opera performances in recent years. “La Fura’s concept is surprising and its originality demands our attention … it gives rise to moments of great beauty and evocative power” (El País).
Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail
Barcelona’s prestigious Gran Teatre del Liceu presents Mozart’s beloved Singspiel in an elegant, dramaturgically twisted production with a sparkling cast of top-rank international stars headed by coloratura soprano Diana Damrau as Konstanze and rising star Olga Peretyatko as Blonde. Stage director Christof Loy has conjured up a thought-provoking and strikingly original scenario in which both Konstanze and Blonde are feeling respect, admiration and even profound love for their captors. The result is a tantalizing approach that overturns the traditional patterns of good and evil.
“Diana Damrau achieved a huge success at the Barcelona Liceu.” Opera News
“Franz-Josef Selig, the best Osmin I have ever seen.” Opera News