The Salzburg Festival presents Ludwig van Beethoven’s one and only opera, his masterpiece: Fidelio, in a new production staged by Claus Guth, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst and starring Jonas Kaufmann as Florestan. The casting is remarkable in this beautiful new production by the Salzburg Festival. Adrianne Pieczonka embodies the faithful Leonore and Jonas Kaufmann, more tragic than ever, lends his voice to Florestan. The Wiener Philharmoniker and the Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor conducted by Franz Welser-Möst join them in this remarkable performance.
Bregenz Festival 2015: Les Contes d’Hoffmann
“The opera visit of the year – Bregenz is showing a Tales of Hoffmann that makes you forget everything you saw before.” (FAZ) Sparkling with creativity, Stefan Herheim’s new staging of Jacques Offenbach’s opera Les contes d’Hoffmann at the Bregenz Festival, starring Kerstin Avemo, Mandy Fredrich, Rachel Frenkel, Daniel Johansson and Michael Volle, was received by an enthusiastic audience with standing ovation and frenetic applause. The international press agreed wholeheartedly: The New York Times praised the “thoughtfulness and creativity” of the new production, devised by the director as a search for one’s own self in a sparkling drag show.
Ariadne auf Naxos
Here is one of the truly overwhelming successes in recent opera history: Christian Thielemann’s sensational return to the Vienna State Opera to conduct his first-ever performances there of Richard Strauss, with an ideal cast in an acclaimed production of Ariadne auf Naxos, featuring Peter Matic, Sophie Koch, Soile Isokoski and Johan Botha, stage directed by Sven-Eric Bechtolf. “A triumph […] world stars and ensemble shine” (Die Presse). “Strauss in all his glory”(Wiener Zeitung).
Salzburg Easter Festival 2016: Otello
A superb new Otello from the Salzburg Easter Festival: “Cura is a commanding Otello with his richly coloured tenor and both fragile delicacy and fiery ardour” (Südwestpresse). “Röschmann as Desdemona guarantees effortless perfection” (Neue Musikzeitung). “Álvarez as Iago would be hard to surpass” (Abendzeitung). Thielemann”has discovered an impressively modern sound for Verdi” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), “generating Italian ‘Musikdrama’ with their incandescence and precise nuances” (Abendzeitung). In his fascinating staging, director Vincent Broussard integrates video with set and lighting design to create an idealized visual context for what he calls Otello’s “conflict of ancient and modern, of 2D and 3D”.
Salzburg Festival 2016: Die Liebe der Danae
A work narrowly linked to the Festival’s rich history, Richard Strauss’ Die Liebe der Danae (The Love of Danae) surely ranks among the highlights of this year’s Salzburg Festival. Krassimira Stoyanova, regular fixture at the Salzburg Festival, is heading a truly supreme cast and emerges as the “one in a thousand, the true Strauss lyric-dramatic soprano who can soar and swoop, working miracles on phrases that never stop coming” (The Artsdesk). Bass-Baritone Tomasz Konieczny, “sings this Jupiter almost unsurpassably” (FAZ). Alvis Hermanis’ colourful production brings oriental flair to the Salzach, his “staging was spectacular above all else” (Opera Today). Labelled as “too beautiful to be true”, the score presents a retrospect of Strauss’ lifework.
The Cunning Little Vixen
After quarter of a century, legendary director Otto Schenk returns to the Wiener Staatsoper to stage Leoš Janácek’s musical fairy tale The Cunning Little Vixen, conducted by Tomáš Netopil. Although the opera premiered in 1924, it took more than 90 years for The Cunning Little Vixen to enter the stage of the magnificent Wiener Staatsoper. To celebrate the fact that the work is heard at the house on the Ring for the very first time, none other than Austrian theatre luminary Otto Schenk devotes himself to staging the adventures of the clever fox and accompanying wildlife. Otto Schenk’s take on Janácek’s opera leaves nothing to be desired: “A triumph!” (Kronen Zeitung). “Tremendous applause for Schenk, the living legend!” (Wiener Zeitung).
Harnoncourt conducts Mozart, The Da Ponte Cycle – Don Giovanni
“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).
Harnoncourt conducts Mozart, The Da Ponte Cycle – Cosí fan tutte
“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 Festival: Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier
“Harry Kupfer and Franz Welser-Möst re-create a wonderful Rosenkavalier.” (FAZ) “Cheers for Welser-Möste and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. (…) The best music theatre production ever of Salzburg Festival.” (Neue Osnarbrücker Zeitung) “With eyes wide shut you could hear the flurries of Straussian invention whirring, whirling, whistling and waltzing round the orchestra pit, making the score sound like a three-hour symphonic poem with voices rather than a “comedy in music”. (Financial Times)
Salzburg Festival: Schubert, Fierrabras
“A revelation” wrote the NRC Handelsblad about Schubert’s rarely heard heroic-romantic opera Fierrabras, one of the highlights of Salzburg Festival 2014. The work, based on a libretto by Josef Kupelwieser after the old French epic Fierabras, is lead by director Peter Stein and conductor Ingo Metzmacher.