Ten years after stepping down as music director of the Bavarian State Opera, Zubin Mehta returned to Munich in March 2016 to celebrate his 80th birthday conducting Verdi’s masterpiece for the first time in a staged production. His cast features some of today’s finest Verdi singers: soprano Anja Harteros, singing Amelia for the first time and “filling every note with Verdian intensity”, tenor Piotr Beczala as a “visually and vocally dashing Riccardo” and George Petean as an “exemplary” Renato (Neue Musikzeitung). In director Johannes Erath’s musically super-sensitive new production, this historically-based tale of illicit love, conspiracy and betrayal unfolds in a surrealistic, shadowy setting transformed by lighting and projections. Special praise was showered by the enthusiastic critics on Maestro Mehta, who “creates concentrated musical connections (…) Musically the performance was a dream” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).
La Favorite
Donizetti’s La Favorite at the Bayerische Staatsoper comes up with a cast of outstanding belcanto singers: star mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca as seducing Léonor de Guzman (her very first stage role!), Matthew Polenzani as her desperate lover Fernand and Mariusz Kwiecien as King Alphonse. Amélie Niermeyer transforms the tragedy of the female role torn between spiritual and secular values into “a concentrated and intense drama […] with high acting quality” (Münchner Merkur). This contrast is highlighted by enormous architectural box structures that continually transport the characters between the convent and the royal palace, emphasizing the influence each party has on the current scene.
Xerxes/Serse
Serse is one of Handel’s latest and most frequently performed operas, famous for its marvellous opening aria “Ombra mai fu”. At the centre of the confusing tragicomedy, very loosely based upon the life of Xerxes I of Persia, is a powerful and lovesick royal eccentric, King Serse. Rising opera star Gaëlle Arquez in the title role of Serse “scintillates with her nimble, luminous mezzo-soprano”, singing “irresistibly beautiful, impassioned, furious – but never mean” (Frankfurter Rundschau). Conducted by Constantinos Carydis, the performance is also musically excellent. “Over and over again, the orchestra, in an intelligent, often witty way, comments with improvised gestures on the stage proceedings, the fine dynamic differentiation, and the many eloquent timbres” (Stuttgarter Nachrichten). Frankfurt’s excellent Opern- and Museumsorchester contributes “all sorts of refinements” to this “musical smash hit” (Deutschlandfunk) and „In Frankfurt Tilman Köhler ensures a three-hour short abundant and furious banquett… a great evening of opera.“ (Deutschlandfunk).
BPO: Rattle conducts John Adams: The Gospel According to the Other Mary
Sir Simon Rattle, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Rundfunkchor Berlin give an impeccable performance of the powerful biblical oratorio “The Gospel According to the Other Mary” by John Adams, one of the most renowned contemporary composers. The sophisticated score with a libretto by acclaimed theatre director Peter Sellars comes to life thanks to the Berliner Philharmoniker, whose intimate knowledge of Adams’s music stems from the composer himself: He attended the orchestra’s rehearsals. In the role of the Evangelist, the “flawless” (Bachtrack) Bubeck, Cummings and Medley lead through the narrative. A stunning highlight is Lazarus’s aria, sung by tenor Peter Hoare – “grand!” (Berliner Zeitung). But at the heart of the piece are Mary Magdalene and her sister Martha during the last days before Jesus’s death, impressively performed by mezzo-sopranos Kelley O’Connor and Tamara Mumford.
Semele
A fulminant opening of the International Handel festival Karlsruhe, Floris Visser’s staging of George Frideric Handel’s musical drama Semele brings distinguished Handel specialists such as the Deutsche Händel-Solisten and the Händel Festspielchor together. Labelled a piece “after the manner of an oratorio”, the dazzling Semele fuses elements of opera, oratorio and classical drama.
Arminio
Max Emanuel Cencics celebrated and award winning production of Handel’s masterwork from the Internationale Händel Festspiele Karlsruhe. Described by one contemporary commentator as “a miracle”, and another as “in every respect excellent & vastly pleasing”, Arminio strangely received only six performances between 12 January and 12 February 1737 at London’s Covent Garden, and was never staged again for almost two hundred years. The heroic story, based on historical events occurring on the Germanic fringes of the Roman Empire, saw ist fulminant revival with a new and ravishing production only in 2016 in Karlsruhe. Max Emanuel Cencic is surrounded by a fine ensemble of singers, with the Greek ensemble Armonia Atenean in the pit, conducted by George Petrou. The press praised the multiply-award-winning production as “rehabilitation of the piece” (FAZ). “Cencic is not only as countertenor but also as stage director at the peak of his success” (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet
55 years after its premiere, the Stuttgart Ballet revisits John Cranko’s legendary Romeo and Juliet – the very choreography which laid the foundations for the “Stuttgart Ballet Miracle”, the company’s meteoric rise to fame. In this anniversary performance of the stunning, timeless production, experienced Cranko-performers and highly talented young dancers share the stage to tell the most famous love story of all time. John Cranko, who led the Stuttgart Ballet from 1961 until his death in 1973, created the choreography of Romeo and Juliet especially for his ensemble. Set to the superb score by Sergei Prokofiev, William Shakespeare’s story about two star-crossed lovers, caught in their families’ feuds, offers dramatic roles for the top-notch soloists: Elisa Badenes shines as “youthful, fresh, entirely natural and spontaneous Juliet”, while her partner David Moore dances a Romeo who is “expressing his love with the greatest sensitivity” (Der Neue Merker).
Bach, Johannespassion (St John Passion)
“A simmering performance that lives up to the high expectations”, wrote the New York Times of the Bach St John Passion presented by the great American director Peter Sellars and star conductor Simon Rattle in the Berlin Philharmonie. This St John Passion shows Simon Rattle, Peter Sellars, the Berlin Philharmonic and “a real dream team of singers” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) building on the brilliant success of the St Matthew Passion and being as wildly applauded as before.
Reimann, Lear
Australian-born Simone Young is internationally recognised as one of the leading conductors of her generation. In 2005 she took up the post of General Manager and Music Director of the Hamburgische Staatsoper and Music Director of the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg, where she’ winning high praises for her interpretation of a repertoire ranging from Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Strauss, to Hindemith, Britten and Henze .“In Aribert Reimann’s Shakespearean opera Lear Simone Young kindled again that fascinating, shimmering colour spectrum between threatening gloom and gleaming lustre, with which she can also beguile in Wagner, Strauss and Verdi.” (NZZ)
Verdi, La Forza del Destino
Ever since their magnificent and hugely successful performance in Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at the Bavarian State Opera, Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann have come to be regarded as the world of opera’s perfect couple. In Giuseppe Verdi’s “La forza del destino”, the two returned and once again played two lovers desperately trying to be together but kept apart by the forces of destiny. Their performance at the Munich Opera Festival met with “explosive outbursts of applause for the new heights
reached in singing” (dpa).