“Opera as Great Romantic Cinema”, wrote the Salzburger Nachrichten about the two one-act operas Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci, which proved real crowd-pullers and ensured record attendances at the Salzburg Easter Festival. No wonder, for “Jonas Kaufmann, for whom it was in both cases his role debut, was on stellar form twice” (Daily Telegraph). “Kaufmann sings both parts so lyrically, with such italianità, mellow with impeccable highs, as to be a pure delight.” (Kurier) Equally impressive are Thielemann – “the uber-conductor” (Telegraph) – and the Dresdeners, who “take time for sensitive, melodious soul portraits, while delivering consummate drama at just the right moment. What we hear from the pit is sensational in its nuances.” (Kurier) The scene is set by film and opera director Philipp Stölzl, contributing to the performance’s huge fascination: Stölzl divides the stage into several levels, staging crowd scenes below, private feelings above – the latter projected with filmic close-ups – doubling and trebling the action. Productions like this, insists Kurier, “simply must be described as worldclass”. “Thrilling” concludes the Telegraph.
Salzburg Festival 2013: Mozart, Così fan tutte
Sven-Eric Bechtolf, dramatic director of the Salzburg Festival, staged this new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, conducted by German conductor Christoph Eschenbach, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.. Featuring Malin Hartelius as Fiordiligi, “who cuts an attractive figure, acting with charm and ease.” Luca Pisaroni’s Guglielmo is “generous in dimension and in possession of all the necessary criteria for the role”. (Moore Parker, The Opera Critic)
Salzburg Festival 2013: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare / Mendelssohn)
The new production of Shakespeares’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the incidental music by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy from Salzburg Festival 2013 is performed in a new translation and edition by Austrian director Henry Mason. Ivor Bolton, chief conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, leads the open-air perfomance at Salzburg’s stunning Courtyard of the Residenz Palace.
Bregenz Festival 2013: André Tchaikowsky, The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespear’s play was turned into an opera by André Tchaikowsky, a Polish-born composer who emigrated to Great Britain. He wrote the opera in 1970s and 80s, but it has never been performed. The world premiere at Bregenz Festival received rave reviews for the staging and the artistic perfomance of the cast: “Keith Warner’s elegant, flowing production evokes the time of the Dreyfus Affair” … “Though Adrian Eröd’s poignantly powerful Shylock stood out, the rest of the excellent cast helped make this a restitution to remember.” (The Telegraph)
Puccini, La fanciulla del West
A celebrated new production of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West from the Vienna State opera featuring Jonas Kaufmann and Nina Stemme. Stage by Marco Arturo Marelli, who sets it in a modern-day mining village. ‘Nina Stemme and Jonas Kaufmann are the opera’s must-see couple for a generation’ (Financal Times). ‘Excellent singing from top to bottom, tight orchestral playing, beautiful lighting, and a decisive lack of cowboys, saloons and other “Wild West” clichés.’ (Bachtrack.com)
Salzburg Festival: Verdi, Il Trovatore
“Anna Netrebko – better than Maria Callas” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) – Since her sensational success in “La Traviata” the soprano Anna Netrebko, now even more popular than ever before, returns regularly to the great festival hall at the Salzburg Festival. This time she shines as Leonora in Giuseppe Verdi’s tragic opera “Il Trovatore” at the side of Placido Domingo and the critics go wild: “A triumph” writes the New York Times, while the Neue Zürcher Zeitung speaks of “truly divine sounds”. Alvis Hermanis staged the plot that revolves round two rival brothers who love the same woman and only learn they are related at the moment of her death, using sets that “in their opulent adherence to detail and fantastically illuminated atmosphere (…) offer much more than just a decorative sight for sore eyes“ (Salzburger Nachrichten).
Salzburg Easter Festival: Strauss, Arabella
A “lyric comedy” is how Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal described their final collaboration, on which they worked between 1927 and 1929. Arabella revolves around the true love between two very different couples – the love that unites two people forever “in joy and sorrow, hurt and forgiveness”, as Arabella herself puts it at the end of the opera. With René Fleming in the title role and a supporting cast that includes Thomas Hampson, Gabriela Benacková and the young tenor Daniel Behle – surely a star of the future – this production from the Salzburg Easter Festival was the first of the piece at the Festival since 1958. Under the Strauss specialist Christian Thielemann, it featured a Strauss ensemble that could hardly be bettered today. Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson are a “dream couple for Richard Strauss” (Salzburger Nachrichten).
Harnoncourt conducts Mozart, The Da Ponte Cycle – Le Nozze di Figaro
“He was out to create something ‘unheard-of’,” observed conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt beforehand. And true to form: What the conductor had to offer as he commenced his Mozart/ Da Ponte cycle in the Theater an der Wien was something we “had never before heard like this” (Kurier). Nikolaus Harnoncourt, “master” of period performance practice, realized a project that had long been one of his dearest wishes: for the first time, he and his “original-sound orchestra” Concentus Musicus and his personal choice of singers were presenting the complete Mozart/Da Ponte cycle and harvesting the fruits of his Mozart research – an “enthusiastically acclaimed cycle!” (news.at).
Salzburg Easter Festival 2013: Parsifal
Appropriately for the Wagner anniversary year the new era of the Salzburg Easter Festival under the Artistic Direction of Christian Thielemann begins with a new production of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal with the Staatskapelle Dresden as new orchestra in residence. It will be staged by the German director Michael Schulz. The title role in Richard Wagner’s Parsifal has been cast at the highest level with Johan Botha. At the special request of Christian Thielemann, Wolfgang Koch, one of the outstanding Wagner baritones of our times, takes on two roles: Amfortas and Klingsor. The celebrated mezzo-soprano Michaela Schuster will interpret the role of Kundry. The leading Danish bass and Wagner specialist Stephen Milling will appear as Gurnemanz and the young Bulgarian bass Milcho Borovinov in the role of Titurel.
R. Strauss, Capriccio
American soprano Renée Fleming, renowned for her commanding musicianship, intelligence and interpretive abilities, sings one of her signature roles, the elegant Countess in Richard Strauss’s Capriccio in this delightful production from the Vienna State Opera. Renée Fleming stars alongside the Danish baritone Bo Skovhus and conductor Christoph Eschenbach, who leads the Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera. Also performing are Michael Schade, Markus Eiche, Kurt Rydl and Angelika Kirchschlager.