Il trittico was premiered in New York on 14 December 1918, composed while the First World War was still raging in Europe. At first glance, the three one-act operas Gianni Schicchi, Il tabarro and Suor Angelica seem to have no connection with each other; their common denominator is solely the entanglement of man in a fateful destiny that only exceptionally, for a moment, seems to promise a happy outcome to the “adventure of life” — a set of themes that in its complexity seems to be in such good hands with few directors as with Christof Loy. The main female roles in the three opera acts are performed by the Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian, a very rare and tremendous feat, but once again connects the works to each other. “Grigorian is […] a wonderful, intense performer: a gracefully graceful Donna fragile as Lauretta, a feverishly longing for love while tormented by guilt Giorgetta, and a desperately lost Angelica rebelling with defiance.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
Salzburg Festival 2022: Bluebeard’s Castle & De Temporum Fine Comedia
The Salzburg Festival presented Bluebeard’s Castle in a double bill evening together with Carl Orff’s De temporum fine comoedia. In his staging of the two works, Romeo Castellucci, reveals the profound connections in their juxtapositio between interiority and explosion of violent power.
200000 Taler
Boris Blacher was one of the most important and most widely performed composers in post-war Germany. In his 1969 opera “200 000 Taler” (200 000 Thalers) he adapted a comedy by famed and popular Jewish author Scholom Aleichem and created a sophisticated milieu study around tailor Schimele Soroker and his family who come to great fortune by winning the lottery.
This 1970 recording of the world premiere production stars a stunning Martha Mödl as Soroker’s wife and Günter Reich in the role of the shrewd tailor. Director Gustav Rudolf Sellner leads his fine cast meticulously through the comic and self-ironic material and supports the cliché-less score that Blacher conceived for Aleichem’s characters. Heinrich Hollreiser conducts the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin with insight and musical mastery. As the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote after the premiere, “Blacher discovers forces and notions that move our century within the naive, unpretentious literary material at hand. … Without ever using Jewish melodies this score creates a kind of folklore of a setting that is fully Blacher’s own. Here lives a new style.
Oedipus
As one of the most versatile and best-known contemporary German composers, Wolfgang Rihm has always impressed and shocked with the powerful expressiveness of his music. And his “Oedipus”, originally commissioned by the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1987 has lost nothing of its musical impact over the years. Rihm’s opera – in an impressive production by the intendant and principal director at the time, Götz Friedrich, with baritone Andreas Schmidt (at the start of his international career) in the title role – was praised by audiences and critics alike. Schmidt was subsequently not only much in demand as a performer of the classical repertoire and a lieder recitalist but also gained a reputation for his interpretations of works by other contemporary composers ranging from Hans Werner Henze to Peter Ruzicka.
Luisa Miller
Giuseppe Verdi’s Luisa Miller is an opera in three acts based on Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love). Just before Christmas 2012, it was recorded at the Malmö Opera, the leading opera house in the expansive region of Öresund in Sweden. Luisa Miller is the story of the lovers Luisa and Rodolfo. Their love is challenged by class distinctions between their families. Despite the couple’s struggle, the story eventually ends in inevitable tragedy. The Russian opera singer and rising star Olesya Golovneva is breathtaking as Luisa and the Swedish Expressen writes that Luc Robert as Rodolfo “is a gold treasure from Canada. A real tenor!” Conducted by internationally acclaimed Michael Güttler, who works for opera houses and orchestras all over the world, including the Orchestre de Paris and the Wiener Staatsoper, this opera is a must have’.
Rinaldo
Theodor
“The World Premiere of ‘Theodor’ involved you emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually with effective singing, convincing acting, taut libretto, and intuitive, haunting music” (Opera Now, Critics’ Choice) The opera Theodor intertwines two key periods in Theodor Herzl’s life. In one, a disillusioned, older Herzl flees his failed marriage and a world filled with hate, haunted by the Dreyfus Affair. In the other, a young Herzl, proud of joining a nationalist student union, looks toward a promising future. As these timelines converge, both versions of Herzl struggle with the desire to belong and escape their inner isolation, each seeking to create a new reality for himself just before he transforms into a legend. Theodor is the first opera by Israel born composer Yonatan Cnaan. His cinematic music contains references to Chopin and Kurt Weill, for example, but also to early Jewish composers like Sasha Argov. An “excellent” cast of twelve leading Israeli singers, among them Oded Reich in the title role and Anat Czarny in the role of his wife Julie, makes the production a “roaring success” and a “must-see” (The Jerusalem Post).
Die tote Stadt
In 1920s Germany, Erich Korngold’s work was considered “degenerate” and banned. Eventually, in 1934, he left for Hollywood. There, he made a name for himself as a film composer and only rarely wrote great works for the stage. Many of his quite successful operas, composed between 1913 and 1927, stopped being performed after World War II. Among these was his perhaps most significant work, Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City”), which was performed again for the first time after a long hiatus in 1955 in Munich. Further productions followed. Nevertheless, Götz Friedrich’s version of 1983 for the Deutsche Oper Berlin was only the fifth new production of the opera after 1945. Thanks to it, the work became established in the repertoires of many other opera houses, if only as a curiosity.
In the production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1983, James King, who debuted at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1961 and had a great interest in the role, starred as Paul; the internationally renowned singer Karan Armstrong as Marietta; and William Murray as Frank.
Preußisches Märchen
On the surface it is a comic version of the “Hauptmann von Köpenick” story in which it is not the petty thief Wilhelm Voigt who carries off the prank but a respected member of society, the clerk Wilhelm Fadenkreutz. He is not a factory owner like Diederich Heßling, but definitely has many of the characteristics of the hero of “Der Untertan”. Boris Blacher and Heinz von Cramer Cramer quickly realised that such a devastating critique of Germany’s past would not be easy to stage, and they toned down the satirical text before presenting it to the intendant of the Städtische Oper, Heinz Tietjen. Blacher also shortened the caricature of the German national anthem played on the tuba at the start of the piece to make it less recognisable. The authors cast about for a long time for a title for their work that would not conflict with Carl Zuckmayer’s “Der Hauptmann von Köpenick”. After considering “Herrliche Zeiten” (Glorious Times), they finally hit on the idea of combining the local and the fantastical by calling the work “Preußisches Märchen” (A Prussian Fairytale). The premiere on 23 September 1952 in the Theater des Westens, where the Deutsche Oper Berlin ensemble appeared under the title of “Städtische Oper” between 1945 and 1961, was acclaimed by audiences and critics alike.
Die Gespenstersonate
In September 1984, as part of the Berlin Festival Week, the Deutsche Oper Berlin staged the world premiere of German composer Aribert Reimann’s opera “Die Gespenstersonate”. Based on the drama by the Swedish writer August Strindberg, the chamber opera tells the story of a student, who muses about the inhabitants of a fancy-looking house. His crucial meeting with the Old Man pulls him into a world of intrigues, sickness, depression and murder. It plays in and around the presumably haunted house, which seems to drown its inhabitants in its sinister atmosphere. Better known for his operas “Lear” or “Medea”, Reimann established himself firmly as a stage composer from 1965 onwards. “Die Gespenstersonate”, being a modern chamber opera, was performed not on the great stage of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, but at the smaller Hebbel-Theater. Heinz Lukas-Kindermann’s stage direction sets the spectator under its gloomy spell, the exquisite cast performing the demanding score stars Hans Günter Nöcker as the “Old Man” and David Knutson as the Student, as well as well-loved Martha Mödl as the “Mummy”.