One of the most often performed operas in the world, Mozart´s “Magic Flute”, in the spectacular new production from Bregenz Festival 2013, that takes the audience into a fantasy world. Stage director David Pountey ” finds stunning answers to the everlasting questions surrounding ‘The Magic Flute’.” (Tagesspiegel) “The singers do their courageous best. …, Ana Durlovski hits all her high notes as Queen of the Night, and Daniel Schmutzhard’s Papageno is robust and assured. (Financial Times)
Salzburg Festival 2013: Verdi, Falstaff
Italian director Damiano Michieletto put on his Falstaff for the Salzburg Festival in the present-day “Casa Verdi”, a retirement home for elderly musicians Verdi founded at the time of the composition of this opera. As Falstaff Amborgio Maestri, who has played the role in 19 new productions so far. “His physique is just right for the part, as are his powerful voice, flair for drama and feeling for the Verdi style.” (New York Times) He is joined by soprano Fiorenza Cedolins as Alice Ford, the mezzo-soprano Stephanie Houtzeel as Meg Page and mezzo-soprano Elisabeth Kulman as Mrs. Quickly. Zubin Mehta leads the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Salzburg Festival 2013: Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
One of the highlight opera productions of Salzburg Festival 2013: The new Stefan Herheim production of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, conducted by Daniele Gatti, with Michael Volle, one of the foremost German baritones as Hans Sachs and highly acclaimed Italian tenor Roberto Saccà, who for over two decades he has been singing on the stages of the world’s major opera houses, as Walther von Stolzing.
Salzburg Festival: Verdi, Don Carlo
The Salzburg Festival hosts a new production of Verdi’s “Don Carlo”, directed by Peter Stein and embodied by Jonas Kaufmann. The production is based on the original version of the opera, which includes those passages that were cut shortly before the first performance in 1867. Verdi’s masterpiece demands world-class singers at the peak of their powers, such as Jonas Kaufmann, “who combines absolute technical stability with the highest musical intelligence”, and soprano Anja Harteros, who’s “Elisabetta is quite simply sublime: majestically phrased, rich in nuance, clear of diction and moving easily from immaculately floated pianissimo to sterling fortissimo”. (The Telegraph)
Salzburg Festival: Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (from Hangar-7 at the Salzburg Airport)
Hangar-7 at the Salzburg Airport transformed into an event location resounding with culture! On the schedule: Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, produced especially for TV viewers and interpreted as Konstanze’s seduction by the promises of the j et set world. An adventure for anyone interested in a new and different way of experiencing opera and TV!
Dionysos
It was a daring enterprise in every respect. A work of music drama that the composer Wolfgang Rihm had carried about with him for more than 15 years – its premiere already postponed three times – was now to be committed to paper in a matter of weeks. A production team that had to plan to a tight deadline before the piece was even in existence – rehearsals began a week after composition was completed – was faced with a highly artificial text: Nietzsche’s late “Dionysos dithyrambs”, the last poetic thoughts of the philosopher, published shortly before his breakdown.
Arabella
A “lyric comedy” is what Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal called their last joint work, written between 1927 and 1929. In this acclaimed performance at the Vienna State Opera, director Sven-Eric Bechtolf shifts the action from 1860, when the work was written, to the 1920s, both eras that witnessed a massive economic crisis. Emily Magee debuted to great acclaim in the title role. Genia Kühmeier as her little sister Zdenka transfigures the role with her lyrically expressive soprano voice. She is ably supported by the splendidly radiant tenor voice of Michael Schade as the young officer Matteo. Conductor Franz Welser-Möst lends the brilliant tone colours of Strauss’s music a decidedly Viennese character with the result that the audience enjoys a production that is one of the brightest gems in Strauss’s opera oeuvre and an experience perhaps only to be encountered in Vienna.
Salzburg Festival 2012: Die Soldaten
Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s opera Die Soldaten (The Soldiers), the “highlight of the festival season” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), breaks all records! The style and structure of an opera, acknowledged as one of the 20th century’s key works, its musical and dramatic collage technique take it to the limits of what is playable. Now, in Salzburg’s Felsenreitschule, the opera has found the ideal performance venue and, with the Vienna Philharmonic under Ingo Metzmacher together with a top-flight cast of singers, ist ideal performers too.
Salzburg Festival 2012: Die Zauberflöte
A Salzburg Festival performance of The Magic Flute in Mozart’s native city is always a special event, and when it is the first performance on period instruments, conducted by the Mozart specialist Nikolaus Harnoncourt with “his” Concentus Musicus ensemble, then it is the sort of event which attracts a great degree of international attention and anticipation in advance. Anticipation which is then rewarded: “Harnoncourt conducts with precision and finesse”, wrote the Financial Times. According to the Kurier newspaper, there was “much that is new, most of it fascinating, some of it astounding in its musical interpretation”, while Concentus Musicus “produces a surprisingly powerful sound” (Financial Times).
Salzburg Festival 2012: Das Labyrinth
2012 marked the 200th anniversary of the death of Emanuel Schikaneder, certainly one of the most original and influential theater impresarios of his time and generation. What is less well-known is the fact that Schikaneder himself wrote a second part for The Magic Flute, entitled Das Labyrinth oder Der Kampf mit den Elementen (The Labyrinth, or the Struggle with the Elements). Schikaneder entrusted this work to the Bavarian composer Peter von Winter, widely celebrated in Vienna at the time. Ivor Bolton conducts his Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra energetically, smoothly and elegantly, bringing out the best in Winter’s charming music with its cleverly interwoven echoes of Mozart. The soloists are from the top drawer: Michael Schade triumphs as Tamino, while Thomas Tatzl and Anton Scharinger are a brilliant young and old Papageno. Coloratura soprano Julia Novikova is in full command of her role as the Queen of the Night.