Stuttgart’s world renowned directing-duo, Jossi Wieler, Intendant of the Oper Stuttgart and the opera’s chief dramaturg Sergio Morabito, stage a new production of Tchaikovsky’s operatic masterwork Pique Dame. The production featuring Erin Caves as Hermann, Vladislav Sulimsky as Tomsky, Helene Schneiderman as the Countess and Rebecca von Lipinski as Lisa is conducted by Stuttgart’s musical director Sylvain Cambreling.
Hosokawa: Stilles Meer
Under the baton of Kent Nagano, the Philharmoniker Hamburg performed the eagerly awaited world premiere of the opera Stilles Meer by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa, starring superb singers as the world famous countertenor Bejun Mehta. Stilles Meer transfers a prominent theme of the Japanese dance theatre, Sumidagawa, into the setting of Fukushima, picturing the grief of a German woman who lost her boy and her husband during the Tsunami that attacked Fukushima in March 2011 and her unrelievable sorrow not being able to accept that reality. “The orchestra plays [for Kent Nagano] with delicate precision. Susanne Elmark sings with clarity and warmth. Bejun Mehta infuses his lines with affectingly bittersweet melancholy. ” (Financial Times).
Un ballo in maschera
Ten years after stepping down as music director of the Bavarian State Opera, Zubin Mehta returned to Munich in March 2016 to celebrate his 80th birthday conducting Verdi’s masterpiece for the first time in a staged production. His cast features some of today’s finest Verdi singers: soprano Anja Harteros, singing Amelia for the first time and “filling every note with Verdian intensity”, tenor Piotr Beczala as a “visually and vocally dashing Riccardo” and George Petean as an “exemplary” Renato (Neue Musikzeitung). In director Johannes Erath’s musically super-sensitive new production, this historically-based tale of illicit love, conspiracy and betrayal unfolds in a surrealistic, shadowy setting transformed by lighting and projections. Special praise was showered by the enthusiastic critics on Maestro Mehta, who “creates concentrated musical connections (…) Musically the performance was a dream” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).
La Favorite
Donizetti’s La Favorite at the Bayerische Staatsoper comes up with a cast of outstanding belcanto singers: star mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca as seducing Léonor de Guzman (her very first stage role!), Matthew Polenzani as her desperate lover Fernand and Mariusz Kwiecien as King Alphonse. Amélie Niermeyer transforms the tragedy of the female role torn between spiritual and secular values into “a concentrated and intense drama […] with high acting quality” (Münchner Merkur). This contrast is highlighted by enormous architectural box structures that continually transport the characters between the convent and the royal palace, emphasizing the influence each party has on the current scene.
Xerxes/Serse
Serse is one of Handel’s latest and most frequently performed operas, famous for its marvellous opening aria “Ombra mai fu”. At the centre of the confusing tragicomedy, very loosely based upon the life of Xerxes I of Persia, is a powerful and lovesick royal eccentric, King Serse. Rising opera star Gaëlle Arquez in the title role of Serse “scintillates with her nimble, luminous mezzo-soprano”, singing “irresistibly beautiful, impassioned, furious – but never mean” (Frankfurter Rundschau). Conducted by Constantinos Carydis, the performance is also musically excellent. “Over and over again, the orchestra, in an intelligent, often witty way, comments with improvised gestures on the stage proceedings, the fine dynamic differentiation, and the many eloquent timbres” (Stuttgarter Nachrichten). Frankfurt’s excellent Opern- and Museumsorchester contributes “all sorts of refinements” to this “musical smash hit” (Deutschlandfunk) and „In Frankfurt Tilman Köhler ensures a three-hour short abundant and furious banquett… a great evening of opera.“ (Deutschlandfunk).
Semele
A fulminant opening of the International Handel festival Karlsruhe, Floris Visser’s staging of George Frideric Handel’s musical drama Semele brings distinguished Handel specialists such as the Deutsche Händel-Solisten and the Händel Festspielchor together. Labelled a piece “after the manner of an oratorio”, the dazzling Semele fuses elements of opera, oratorio and classical drama.
Arminio
Max Emanuel Cencics celebrated and award winning production of Handel’s masterwork from the Internationale Händel Festspiele Karlsruhe. Described by one contemporary commentator as “a miracle”, and another as “in every respect excellent & vastly pleasing”, Arminio strangely received only six performances between 12 January and 12 February 1737 at London’s Covent Garden, and was never staged again for almost two hundred years. The heroic story, based on historical events occurring on the Germanic fringes of the Roman Empire, saw ist fulminant revival with a new and ravishing production only in 2016 in Karlsruhe. Max Emanuel Cencic is surrounded by a fine ensemble of singers, with the Greek ensemble Armonia Atenean in the pit, conducted by George Petrou. The press praised the multiply-award-winning production as “rehabilitation of the piece” (FAZ). “Cencic is not only as countertenor but also as stage director at the peak of his success” (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
Reimann, Lear
Australian-born Simone Young is internationally recognised as one of the leading conductors of her generation. In 2005 she took up the post of General Manager and Music Director of the Hamburgische Staatsoper and Music Director of the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg, where she’ winning high praises for her interpretation of a repertoire ranging from Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Strauss, to Hindemith, Britten and Henze .“In Aribert Reimann’s Shakespearean opera Lear Simone Young kindled again that fascinating, shimmering colour spectrum between threatening gloom and gleaming lustre, with which she can also beguile in Wagner, Strauss and Verdi.” (NZZ)
Verdi, La Forza del Destino
Ever since their magnificent and hugely successful performance in Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at the Bavarian State Opera, Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann have come to be regarded as the world of opera’s perfect couple. In Giuseppe Verdi’s “La forza del destino”, the two returned and once again played two lovers desperately trying to be together but kept apart by the forces of destiny. Their performance at the Munich Opera Festival met with “explosive outbursts of applause for the new heights
reached in singing” (dpa).
La Belle Hélène
Jacques Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène has always been one of its composer’s most successful works. Its first performance in Paris was quickly followed by productions in Vienna, Berlin, London, Milan and New York. A satire of middle-class values, this opéra bouffe pillories narrow-mindedness in society. Adopting a pro-active stance, director Renaud Doucet and designer André Barbe treat the piece as a “great show” with numerous choreographic elements, relocating the action of Offenbach’s classical spoof and setting it on a cruise ship in the 1960s, when Flower Power, love and drugs were all the rage. “La Belle Hélène is a firework display for ears and eyes” (Hamburger Morgenpost), “opulent and amusing” (Bild), and in the title role Jennifer Larmore convinces with her “fantastic vocal performance” (Das Opernglas)