Bregenz Festival staged for the first time Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece Rigoletto – compelling, blood-curdling and beautiful. The stage and film director Philipp Stölzl (Medicus & Goethe), known for his successful productions in Salzburg as well as for his music videos for Madonna or for the German band Rammstein, created a spectacular setting on the world’s largest stage on a lake, praised by critics as a unique technological masterpiece. The staggering show has attracted not only 200,000 visitors to 20 sold out performances but also close to 2 million TV-viewers in Germany, Austria and Swiss alone. “This Rigoletto on Lake Constance becomes a Hollywood spectacle.” (Handelsblatt); “The performance of the three main characters has been outstanding.” (Der Standard)
Salzburg Festival 2019: Orphée aux enfers
Operetta enthusiast Barrie Kosky has landed a gigantic success with Offenbach’s subversive and hilarious reversion of the Orpheus myth at the Salzburg Festival. Kosky created a magically precise staging in a glittering opulent scenery and a literally devilish choreography. The dialogues are performed by the brilliant German actor Max Hopp as John Styx. Under Enrique Mazzola’s precise conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker provide “a sparkling orchestral sound” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung): “A frantic and fabulous show” (New York Times).
Salzburg Festival 2017: Wozzeck
With a triumphant staging of Berg’s monumental opera Wozzeck, universal artist William Kentridge, who already made headlines with his productions of The Nose and Lulu, makes his appearance at the Salzburg Festival. In a “breathtaking reassessment” (Financial Times), he puts Berg’s tragical portrait of a simple soldier harassed by a merciless society in an extraordinary, multilayered set design, in which various projections of movie scenes and drawings intertwine with the action on stage. “Mr. Kentridge has given Wozzeck his most elegant and powerful operatic treatment yet.” (New York Times)
Salzburg Festival 2019: Ariodante
At Salzburg Festival, Cecilia Bartoli shines as Ariodante with her dazzling coloratura in a highly acclaimed new production by the German director Christoph Loy, who is known for his clever psychological stagings. Loy turns Handel’s splendid baroque opera into an exciting and differentiated reflection on gender roles. A high-class ensemble, first and foremost a brilliant Cecilia Bartoli in the trouser role of the knight Ariodante who effortlessly switches between cheerful and lamenting virtuoso singing makes the production a true triumph. At her side perform audience favourite Rolando Villazón as Lurcano and young American soprano Kathryn Lewek, praised by critics as a „true discovery“ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). Gianluca Capuano at the podium of the Musiciens du Prince – Monaco „provides for elegance, richness of colour and a sensitive, stirring realisation of the ingenious score.“ (Kurier). “Cecilia Bartoli is a league of her own!” (Der Standard). “The singing was sensational” (LA Times)
Salzburg Easter Festival 2018: Tosca
Anja Harteros excels in the title role of Michael Sturminger’s cinematic staging of Puccini’s “Tosca”, the centrepiece of Salzburg Easter Festival. Aleksandrs Antonenko compellingly portrays Cavaradossi, while Ludovic Tézier is a thrillingly malevolent Scarpia. Christian Thielemann leads the Staatskapelle Dresden. “Tosca” is a political thriller with a heart-breaking love story that gives a vivid account of the harassment of artists, political persecution, torture and arbitrary executions. In Salzburg it is set in the Mafiosi world of modern day Rome and is “the perfect thriller … reminiscent of Scorsese’s ‘Goodfellas’” (Kleine Zeitung), a “film noir” (FAZ).
Salzburg Festival 2018: Die Zauberflöte
Mozart’s timeless masterpiece at the Salzburg Festival – it doesn’t get much better than this! Especially when “The Magic Flute” receives such a “spectacular and virtuosic staging” (Le Figaro) by American director Lydia Steier. Her colourful, fairy-tale production conjures up magical scenes and revolves around Hollywood star Klaus Maria Brandauer as grandfather, who reads the fantastical story of Tamino’s quest to his three grandchildren. The Three Boys are sung “technically flawlessly and expressively by three members of the Wiener Sängerknaben, a pure joy” (Spiegel Online). Constantinos Carydis leads a young ensemble of world class singers and draws “precise phrasing and plenty of crisp articulation from the Wiener Philharmoniker” (Financial Times). A delight already enjoyed by over one million TV viewers in Germany alone!
Salzburg Festival 2018: Salome
“Salome”, the masterpiece of Richard Strauss, who conducted the very first opera in the history of the Salzburg Festival, finally returns to Salzburg after 25 years. To witness Franz Welser-Möst, a Strauss conductor in a league of his own, at the helm of the Wiener Philharmoniker “makes you think you are hearing the piece in its most perfect incarnation yet.” (Financial Times). The Italian director Romeo Castellucci has the extraordinary gift of creating images pulsating with knowledge of the subconscious, he is responsible for directing and designing stage sets, costumes and lighting. “Asmik Grigorian sweeps all in her wake in the title role of Strauss’s opera. […] Hers is a Salome to end all Salomes. […] In total, it is stunning…” (Financal Times)
Salzburg Festival 2018: Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades)
Russian literature is unimaginable without Pushkin. It feeds on Pushkin, it breathes Pushkin. During his brief life – he died at the age of 38 – he produced a torrent of the most wonderful poems, plays and stories. Pushkin wrote the novella The Queen of Spades in 1833 in the course of a few days and “in a cold fury” – brief, sharply accentuated and focused on psychology. More than 50 years later, Tchaikovsky turned to this tale for an opera. Mariss Jansons conducts the Vienna Philharmonic, Hans Neuenfels directs Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades at the Großes Festspielhaus. Hanna Schwarz appears as the Countess. Evgenia Muraveva sings Lisa, Brandon Jovanovich is Herman, Vladislav Sulimsky appears as Count Tomsky / Plutus, and Igor Golovatenko is Prince Yelezky. “A triumph for conductor Mariss Jansons at the helm of the Wiener Philharmoniker” (FAZ); “Mr. Neuenfels draws gripping performances from a strong cast.” (NY Times)
Bregenz Festival 2018: Beatrice Cenci
Church corruption, human violence & a daughter who plots revenge on her abusive father – Goldschmidt’s Beatrice Cenci has every ingredient for a gripping opera & the story of ist origins is equally fascinating albeit tragic: The Jewish composer, who fled Germany for London in 1935, was awarded a prize for his work, but the promised performance never took place. It was not until 1988 that it received ist premiere as a concert performance. At Bregenz, stage director Johannes Erath brought Beatrice Cenci on stage for the first time.
Salzburg Festival 2016: Faust
Gounod’s Faust was once one of the most famous and most performed of all operas and is still cherished today: surprisingly enough it has never been performed at the Salzburg Festival until 2016! This premiere featured a stunning production by Reinhard von der Thannen, award winning stage director and designer, and a supreme cast, where Ildar Abdrazakov embodies a seductive and demonic Mephistophélès and Italian soprano Maria Agresta stars as Marguerite, who struggles to resist temptation and gain salvatio. But “the crown deserves Piotr Beczala (Faust), a perfect cast” (Abendzeitung). The production was led by young Argentinian conductor Alejo Pérez.