In choreographic episodes, combining dream, memory, premonition and reality John Neumeier’s ballet Tatiana brings to life the story of Tatiana, a young girl brought up in the Russian countryside and her first great love. When considering Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin as a plot for a ballet, it was obvious that Neumeier would not be content with a simple story line. He was more interested in the complex strands of Tatiana’s destiny, the influence of her early life, her experience and evolution into womanhood. As I read Pushkin’s verse novel, I realised that I was fascinated by the role of Tatiana Larina. She became more profound and more interesting with every paragraph, every page that I read. And so I had the idea to explore her role and her perspective in more detail through my ballet”, says Neumeier. “Nearly nobody else besides John Neumeier can tell story with the bodies of his dancers. Tatiana is three hours of danced poetry.” Hamburger Morgenpost
Beethoven Symphony No. 9
This Beethoven Symphony No. 9 from the outstanding Beethoven 9 Project of Christian Thielemann and the Wiener Philharmoniker, first time recorded in HD and 5.0 surround sound, is accompanied by a one hour-long documentary featuring Christian Thielemann and Germany´s most eminent music critic, Prof. Joachim Kaiser. From insights into Beethoven´s musical thinking to interpretational comparisons, including excerpts from performances by Karajan, Bernstein, Järvi, to historical perspectives – no aspect of Beethoven´s Symphony No. 9 will remain untreated!
Franz Schubert: Winterreise – visualized by William Kentridge
Franz Schubert´s “Winterreise” engages with its audience in a new and unexpected form: in a creative encounter with Schubert’s masterpiece. Matthias Goerne, ”the voice of perfection” (Le Figaro), pianist Markus Hinterhäuser and South African director, set designer and theatre artist William Kentridge joined forces on stage and traced newly imagined, deeply moving
images. In short animated films, Kentridge visualises Goerne’s and Hinterhäuser’s sonic contribution. A memorable meeting “of melancholy and magic.” (La Marseillaise). “Mr. Kentridge’s 24 stop-action films – made up of animated ink drawings and collages – offer a visually mesmerizing and thought-provoking commentary on Schubert’s song cycle.” (New York Times);
“There is an unusual robustness to his (Matthias Goerne´s) wanderer, infused by the virile beauty of his powerful baritone.” (New York Times)
Aida
Originally commissioned to celebrate the completion of the Suez Canal and the opening of Cairo’s new opera house, Verdi’s Egyptian epic Aida is here seen in a spectacular new staging in the Teatro Regio Torino by the Oscar-winning American film director William Friedkin, creator of such famous movies as The Exorcist and The French Connection. The cast featuring the American soprano Kristin Lewis, who exhibits “a remarkable voice, which she uses with powerful dramatic instinct” (La Stampa), and the Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, whose Amneris “dominates the stage with her dark, rounded, irrestistible voice and extraordinary stage presence” (La Gazzetta Musicale) is first-rate. All were united in praise of Noseda: “he controls everything – orchestra, singers, chorus, dancers, acrobats – with an all-encompassing overview” (La Stampa); “he knows exactly when it’s time to linger over a timbre, a colour, an expressive chord” (Corriere della Sera).
Norma
“If we weep from emotion on hearing it, it’s nothing to be ashamed of” Richard Wagner on Bellini’s most famous opera Norma, the most successful work by the last and greatest composer of bel canto. This new production of Norma, directed by Grammy Award-nominated opera, theatre and film director Kevin Newbury and starring Sondra Radvanovsky as a “powerful, elegant” Norma (New York Times) and Gregory Kunde as Pollione, is “something very special. The word ‘historic’ is used perhaps a little too often but tonight there really is no other adjective to describe the sensational performances offered to us by Sondra Radvanovsky and Gregory unde.” (operatraveller.com)
Radvanovsky’s performance as Norma has been the fixed point of Newbury’s staging as it has travelled from San Francisco where it opened in September 2014, to Barcelona, and on to Chicago and Toronto, and was enthusiastically received from the off: British Opera magazine described her as “fearless in scaling the heights of this bel canto challenge. Her range of colours, from smoky to crystalline, and her authority […] were wondrous and energizing, starting with a consummately phrased ‘Casta Diva’”.
La Bohème
Puccini’s masterpiece La Bohème is by far the most represented opera in the world. At the famous Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, where Puccini composed his main operas, La Bohème is directed by one of Italy’s greatest film directors: Ettore Scola, the creator of a high number of award-winning seminal films. As he explains in the programme notes, as soon as he was approached to stage La Bohème he had to fight hard to resist the temptation to give life to his “revolutionary” ideas; in the end, he decided for a traditional-looking, rich, grandiose and detailed Bohème. Together with the exceptional cast of Daniela Dessì, Fabio Armiliato, Alessandro Luongo, Alida Berti and Marco Spotti, this production makes for an incomparable great performance.
Joni Mitchell’s The Fiddle and The Drum
Joni Mitchell’s The Fiddle And The Drum explores Mitchell’s life-long concerns about environmental neglect and the warring nature of mankind within a ballet performed to a select soundtrack of her eternal songs. The unique combinations of three art forms – music, dance and art – comprise an engaging spectacle that Joni calls “…the best project of her career.” Legendary Canadian artist Joni Mitchell and internationally acclaimed choreographer Jean Grand-Maître of the Alberta Ballet Company are the co-creators of Joni Mitchell’s The Fiddle And The Drum. This narrative ballet was performed to a specially re–mastered soundtrack of Mitchell’s compelling music – her musical selections are from her earliest to latest recordings such as: For the Roses, Passion Play, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Beat of Black Wings, Sex Kills, The Three Great Stimulants and The Fiddle and The Drum.
András Schiff at Mozartwoche
Vienna – once the music hub of Europe – attracted all the greatest composers of its day, among them Beethoven, Schubert and Mozart. This concert with Sir András Schiff and the Capella Andrea Barca from the Salzburg Mozart Week brings together three works by these great composers, all created at the start of their impressive Viennese careers. About Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto the Salzburg press wrote admiringly: “Sensitively supported by the rich and supple tone of the strings, Schiff’s pianistic virtuosity explores the length and breadth of Beethoven’s early work, from the opulent to the playful, with a palpable delight rarely found in such measure in a pianist”, while in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 “Schiff demonstrates his skill in pianistic interpretation and in conducting, nuanced, passionate, a sensitive revelation”.
Faust
Premiered in Paris in 1859, Gounod’s Faust was an instant success and even today remains one of the most popular of all French operas. Its libretto was based on Michel Carré’s adaptation of his own stage play Faust et Marguerite, which in turn was loosely fashioned after Goethe’s two-part tragedy. “The staging was entrusted to a visionary director, Stefano Poda” (La Stampa). “A triumph that will long remain in the annals as one of the most brilliant stagings not only in this theatre but in any of today’s opera houses … An extraordinary spectacle” (ResMusica).
Mosè
For the first time the opera “Mosè” by Gioachino Rossini is on stage inside a Cathedral in a semi-scenic performance at the Duomo di Milano. The Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, in the wake of a centuries-old tradition of dialogue with the contemporary, chooses the most advanced technology to open up to the world and the public with an immediacy never achieved until now, including lights and colors effects that characterize the scenes of the show, with an evocative videomapping technique.