Recorded live in the presence of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI in Vatican City, this profoundly moving and inspiring concert is a true musical landmark. While the music ranges from the grand to the sublime, the atmosphere retains the warmth and intimacy of a “family reunion”: both the Munich Philharmonic and the boys’ chorus “Regensburger Domspatzen” are world-renowned institutions from the Pope’s native Germany and from cities closely connected with the former Cardinal Ratzinger. Among the works performed is a Sanctus from a mass written by Georg Ratzinger, the Pope’s brother and one-time director of the “Regensburger Domspatzen”. Under the direction of its distinguished young principal conductor Christian Thielemann, the Munich Philharmonic is joined by the boys’ chorus (which also sings a cappella works led by Georg Büchner) in music by Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Palestrina, Pfitzner, Verdi, Wagner and Georg Ratzinger. The musical event is rounded off with an address to the listeners and performers by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.
Sylvia
Léo Delibes’ Sylvia, created in 1876 at the Opéra Garnier, is an absolute masterpiece for its choreographic and musical richness. Manuel Legris, star of the Paris Opera, brings to Milan a new Sylvia that will delight the audience with its sumptuous choreography. This version of Sylvia focuses primarily on heterogeneous possibilities for the development of pure dance and thus also gives a wide scope to the picturesque moments that are once again decorated in great detail by Luisa Spinatelli.
Rossini Opera Festival 2014: Armida
Armida is one of Rossini’s most beautiful operas and a work which clearly privileges the prima donna, here interpreted by Carmen Romeu, a Spanish soprano who started in Pesaro as a student with the Rossini Academy in 2011 and has graduated to important roles. On her side, a brilliant trio of three tenors: Randall Bills, Dmitry Korchak and the outstanding Antonino Siragusa. In this “Dramma per musica”, loosely based on episodes from Torquato Tasso’s epic “Jerusalem Delivered”, is a visually striking magical opera. Luca Ronconi, the second grand master among the great Italian directors alongside Giorgio Strehler, has staged the conflict between Christians and pagans, between the love of the sorceress Armida and the knight Rinaldo, as a homage to Sicilian puppet theatre. A sold out highlight of the Festival.
Mozart Requiem at Arena di Verona
W.A. Mozart’s famous and moving Requiem was performed for the first time in the 2000-year old Arena in Verona. The concert on the impressively designed stage set in the middle of the Arena with the choir standing in a circle around the arena became a collective prayer in an open-air cathedral. Marco Armiliato conducts four excellent soloists and Chorus & Orchestra of the Arena di Verona. The performance of great symbolic impact is dedicated to the victims of the Coronavirus. “An event of great symbolic impact” connessidellopera.it
Il crepuscolo dei sogni
Music from operas by Henry Purcell, Verdi, Monteverdi, by Richard Strauss and Rossini, by Boito and other composers from over 200 years of music history. A so-called pastiche opera. The conductor is Omer Meir Wellber and the director is Johannes Erath. Soprano Carmen Giannattasio, baritone Markus Werba and bass Alexandros Stavrakakis sing on stage and in the stalls. The new season of Palermo’s Teatro Massimo opens with a completely new form of musical theatre. An opera vision – without a plot that is concrete at first glance, explains director Johannes Erath: “But of course there is a common thread. Not in the narrative sense, in the storytelling sense, but it’s more of an emotional journey, like a rollercoaster of emotions.” PRESS “A hymn to the empathic magnificence of opera” (La Repubblica) / “An unprecedented opening” (La Repubblica Palermo)
La bella dormente nel bosco (Sleeping Beauty)
For the seasonal opening of the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, acclaimed stage director Leo Muscato rediscovered a precious rarity of the 20th century: The “musical fairytale” La bella dormente nel bosco (The Sleeping Beauty) by Ottorino Respighi, which had not been staged for 50 years, and which Muscato revived in a “brilliant, surprising and colourful” staging (La Stampa). Indeed, Respighi put a lot of passion and effort into La bella dormente, which is based on Charles Perrault’s fairy tale of the same name. Originally, the piece was conceived as a puppet show, written by Respighi for the Italian marionettist Vittorio Podrecca, director of the famous marionette company Teatro dei Piccoli (Theatre for Children). It was premiered at the Teatro Odescalchi in Rome in 1922. The numerous roles were all interpreted by marionettes and only accompanied by orchestra and singers, who took several roles at once. The production became such a big hit that it went on world tour. Respighi revised his opera two times. The second version, featuring mime artists and dancers instead of marionettes, was put on stage in 1934. A third, posthumous version, completed by Respighi’s wife Elsa, was performed in a concertante version in 1967 in Turin. In the present production of the Teatro Lirico, the prestigious cast of young singers and the enthusiasm shown by Donato Renzetti – who “conducts the orchestra with apparent love for Respighi’s music” (Der Opernfreund) – make their contribution to a “splendid Respighi-Rennaissance” (La Stampa).
Pablo Picasso at Pompeii – Parade & Pulcinella
Celebrating the centenary of Picasso’s visit to Italy, the Teatro Grande di Pompeii hosts two ballets with sets and costumes designed by this legendary Spanish artist. 100 Years ago, Picasso made a journey to Naples in order to work on Parade, an avant-garde ballet for the famous Ballets Russes with a libretto by Jean Cocteau, music by Erik Satie and a choreography by Léonide Massine. Three years later, Picasso and the Ballets Russes joined forces again for Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” at the Opéra de Paris. Performance only: Length 63′ // Narrated Performance Version: Length 67′
Assassinio nella Cattedrale
Pizzetti, one of Italy’s leading lyrical composers of the first half of the 20th century, composed several operas, of which ‘Assassinio nella Cattedrale’ is one of his most famous. Pizzetti’s religiosity manifests itself in his choice of T.S. Eliot’s modern-day miracle play about St. Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who returns from a seven-year-exile only to be confronted by various torments, including Four Temptations; he succumbs to the fourth, the temptation of martyrdom … . Internationally acclaimed bass-baritone Ruggero Raimondi, at home on all of the world’s major stages and unforgotten as Don Giovanni in Joseph Losey’s celebrated 1979 film, brings the firmness and authority of his vocal artistry to this role.
Also available: Making of Pizzetti’s ‘Assassinio Nella Cattedrale’ (15’ – A00501028)
Kirill Petrenko conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker
The first performance at the Lucerne Festival of the Berliner Philharmoniker with their designated chief conductor Kirill Petrenko – Kirill Petrenko and the Berliner Philharmoniker in Lucerne were joined by the Chinese hypervirtuosa Yuja Wang in Sergei Prokofiev’s most popular Piano Concerto, the spirited No. 3. The program began in the world of Persian fairy-tales with Paul Dukas’s ballet score to “La Péri” from 1911, which recounts the story of a good fairy who is half-angel, half-human. And this Impressionist-flavored piece by no means needs to yield ground to Dukas’s better-known “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” … Kirill Petrenko feels extremely devoted to Austrian composer Franz Schmidt, one of the last of the Romantics, who had to endure a traumatic experience when his only daughter, Emma, passed away in March 1932. He subsequently wrote a kind of Requiem with his Fourth Symphony, which includes elegiac laments, a wide-ranging funeral march, and, at the end, a celebration of farewell: “a dying in beauty,” as Schmidt said, “with the whole of one’s life passing in review.”
LA Phil 100 – The Centennial Birthday Gala
A century to the day after the orchestra’s first concert on 24th October 1919, the centennial season culminate in a baton-waving conductor’s summit at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with Dudamel, Mehta and Salonen sharing the podium. The repertoire is a true reflection of the DNA that makes the LA Phil the LA Phil. If you’re wondering why the New York Times recently called the LA Phil “America’s most important orchestra. Period.”, look no further than this concert’s program: Ravel’s La Valse conducted by Zubin Mehta; Lutoslawski’s Symphony No. 4 conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen; Strawinsky’s Firebird Suite conducted by Gustavo Dudamel and the World Premiere of Daníel Bjarnason’s
New Work for Three Conductors!