When it comes to Mozartian perfection on the opera stage, one needn’t always seek it in Milan, Vienna, Salzburg or New York. At the Sferisterio Opera Festival in the central Italian city of Macerata, a rapt audience was treated to a production ‘that will enter the annals of opera’ (ForumOpera.com). This ‘splendid production’ (OperaClick) by Pier Luigi Pizzi sweeps the viewer into a libertine, 18thcentury society dominated by erotic impulses.
La Traviata
The keystone of any production of Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’ is the choice of the soprano to play the tender-hearted courtesan and doomed heroine Violetta Valéry. At the Sferisterio Opera Festival in the central Italian city of Macerata, the choice fell upon Mariella Devia – and it couldn’t have been more ideal for Massimo Gasparon’s stately production. The press was unanimous in acclaiming the ‘exhilarating’ (L’Opinione), ‘incomparable’ (Liberonews. it) singer, who ‘towers over the cast’ and is a ‘worthy representative of the great school of Italian singing’ (ForumOpera.com). A frequent and much-acclaimed Violetta, Mariella Devia boasts ‘perfect projection and intact vocal freshness’ (Rinascita).
Madama Butterfly
The superior cast of this production is dominated by Raffaella Angeletti in the title role, ‘certainly one of the best Butterflies of our time’ (ForumOpera.com), who has performed this role in many Italian theaters, as well as in Madrid and at the Vienna Staatsoper. As Pinkerton, Massimo Pisapia is ‘brilliant, bold and trim’ (L’Opinione) and Annunziata Vestri’s Suzuki ‘outstanding’ (Rinascita). The performance took place in the magnificent open-air neo-classical Arena Sferisterio built in the 1820s. Though unjustly garnering less international attention than other outdoor summer festivals such as Verona and Aix, the Sferisterio Opera Festival has become a true gem whose performances are enthusiastically acclaimed by audiences of genuine opera lovers from far and wide.
Così fan Tutte
Director Claus Guth’s production of Mozart’s da Ponte trilogy for the Salzburg Festival reaches its sensational conclusion with his elegant, stylish production from the “Haus für Mozart.” Guth bolsters the unity of the cycle by making ingenious reference to his stagings of the first two works, “Le nozze di Figaro” and “Don Giovanni” (both available from UNITEL). His widely acclaimed production of the trilogy, which began in the Mozart Year 2006, consolidates Guth’s international reputation as one of the most sought-after stage directors of our time.
Lohengrin
With Jonas Kaufmann’s long-awaited role debut as Lohengrin and Anja Harteros as Elsa, Wagner’s epic of love and loss was not only the opening premiere of the Munich Opera Festival, but its uncontested highlight as well. Which is why the performance was followed not only by a longsold- out house, but also by tens of thousands of spectators at a live public viewing event in Munich and Vienna.
Palestrina
Requiring 38 soloists, chorus and large orchestra, “Palestrina”, Hans Pfitzner’s (1869-1949) “most important work” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), is a challenging opera to stage. In Munich, the city in which it was given its world premiere in 1917, the Bavarian State Opera succeeded – director Christian Stückl, best known for his staging of the Oberammergau Passion Play and the Salzburg Festival’s “Jedermann”, transformed the monumental work into an optical pop art event. Stückl’s production infuses such color and life into the serious work that even the German tabloid “Abendzeitung” delightedly wrote: “Who would have thought that Pfitzner could be such fun?”
Admeto
When one of Germany’s most famous filmmakers and stimulating operatic directors focuses her creativity on a rarely performed Handel opera, the result is a ‘mixture of dancers and singers, comedy and pathos’ (The Times). ‘Admeto’, one of Handel’s most popular operas in his lifetime, was premiered in London in January 1727. Doris Dörrie, whose Japan-inspired feature film ‘Cherry Blossoms – Hanami’ was a major German box-office hit and won several international awards, returns to her beloved Japan in this production. Flowing robes, translucent panels and the participation of Japan’s Mamu Dance Theater and its choreographer/dancer Tadashi Endo add an evocative dimension to the work whose lead roles were written for a popular castrato and two rivaling primadonnas.
Wozzeck
Libretto by Alban Berg after the Play by Georg Büchne. r
Berg was conscripted during the 1914-18 war and acquired from his experiences the compassion and loathing to write his first, terrifyingly great opera, about a soldier tormented and mocked by his superiors until he loses his reason, cutting the throat of his mistress, and drowning himself. A devious world destroys Wozzeck’s sense of identity and turns him into a murderer.
This brutalisation is made palpable in Peter Mussbach’s highly-stylised production which, in ist expressionistic artificiality, heightens the emotional intensity of this searing work. In his hands Wozzeck becomes an agonising lament over lost innocence. Mussbach is a master of visual and dramatic effect and the impact of his staging is enhanced by the framing opportunities afforded by video recording under studio conditions. Surfaces are steeply raked and blaze in primary colours; perspectives are flattened and distorted; space is confined; decoration has been stripped away; character is manifested through costumes, masks, make-up, movement; the particular stands for the collective.
Dale Duesing, as Wozzeck, is a charismatic central figure, an agile performer, restless and tormented. The role of Marie is taken by Kristine Ciesinski, a consummate singer and actress of Berg’s work. Mussbach’s Hauptmann is reminiscent of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, and his Doctor brings to mind a frock-coated Frankenstein. These monsters of inhumanity are incisively portrayed by Dieter Bundschuh and Frode Olsen. A powerful tenor, Ronald Hamilton sings the role of the grotesquely overblown Drum Major. Conductor Sylvain Cambreling’s reading of the score is characterised by ist structural clarity.
Salome
From the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1997 Staged for the Royal Opera, Luc Bondy’s Salome is a terrifying study of a family of degenerates. Never decadent, it is about decay. Spare and severe, it is staged in close focus in the bowels of Herod’s palace, with every small exchange of his monstrous family spotlit in a dismal and cavernous space. The characterisations of Catherine Malfitano, Bryn Terfel, Kenneth Riegel and Anja Silja are exceptionally powerful. Conductor Christoph von Dohnányi draws every strand and fleck of colour from Strauss’s cauldron of a score. (Sung in German)
The Cunning Little Vixen
Nicholas Hytner’s enchanting production, sung in the original Czech, is conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, a master of the best Janácek style. Through myriad shifts of scene, the episodic story is presented in brightly-coloured sets and costumes of blissful innocence and simplicity, designed by Bob Crowley. Jean-Claude Gallotta’s choreography for the insects and animals, and Jean Kalman’s lighting add to the nostalgically poetic effect of the whole. With Sir Thomas Allen as the Forester, the cast includes Eva Jenis, Hanna Minutillo, Richard Novak and Ivan Kusnjer.