Les Martyrs

Love, faith, death and the question of what people are prepared to risk for their values and convictions. Gaetano Donizetti deals with these themes using the example of Christian martyrdom. An outrage for the Italian censors of the 1830s, prompting Gaetano Donizetti to switch to France and enlist the help of librettist Eugène Scribe to publish the opera he had been planning, Poliuto, as a grand opéra. Under the title Les martyrs the work had its premiere in Paris in 1840 and included, among other things, a ballet scene, an innovative score structure that presaged the music-drama form, and a spectacularly reworked tenor part. Today, it is one of Donizetti’s lesser-known and rarely performed works, but for Polish director Cezary Tomaszewski it is nevertheless “the best Donizetti opera. A hybrid of bel canto and grand opéra. A masterpiece, thrilling, cinematic with multi-layered and exciting characters”. He transfers the plot to a fantastic, amorphous and futuristic world that focuses on the attempted domination of power over the body. American tenor

John Osborn is debuting in the demanding bel canto part of Polyceute (“heroic, confident in the heights, and supple the Polyeucte of John Osborn”, Der Standard). He is joined by Roberta Mantegna as Pauline (“her singing is enchanting – firm, yet soft and radiant tones with sparkling coloratura”, klasikaplus.cz) The ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Jérémie Rhorer, a specialist in historically informed performance practice. “An absolute event is the […] consummately singing Arnold Schoenberg Choir.” (Kurier)v

La gazza ladra

A feathered thief, a servant wrongly sentenced to death and a corrupt, power-hungry politician: those are the protagonists of Rossini’s semi-serious opera whose overture, with its drum rolls and oboe solo, is one of the best-known pieces in the history of music. La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) is set in a time of great social upheaval. When Ninetta is accused of stealing a silver spoon, a series of unfortunate events begins that initially makes the happy ending expected from an opera semiseria seem highly unlikely. What sort of world is it where a person can be executed for the alleged theft of a spoon? Tobias Kratzer, successful as a director throughout Europe, now debuts in Vienna with Rossini’s opera that received its first performance in 1817 and traces the uncertainty felt by people in a politically and socially destabilised world. “To the left and right, drum rolls sound from the pit, then the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra gets going, effervescent, grand, dense and dark, but at the same time filigree. [The Arnold Schoenberg Choir, Marina de Liso, Maxim Mironov, Fabio Capitanucci and all the others] “sing and play as if they had inhaled Kratzer’s idea of the highly lively, truthful play.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

Theater an der Wien: Zazà

With Ruggero Leoncavallo’s rarity Zazá, the Theater an der Wien scored a coup with the grandiose house debutante Svetlana Aksenova in the title role. Christof Loy delivers a striking staging of the Verismo drama and conductor Stefan Soltez spiritedly leads the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien through the highly acclaimed evening. At the center of the piece is the provincial variety theatre artist Zazà who soon finds herself between two men, but also between the life she has been used to up to now and the hope for the happiness of a secure middleclass existence through marriage and love. One is Cascart, her stage partner and former lover, whom she keeps afloat like her alcoholic mother. The other is the Parisian businessman and bon vivant Milio, whom she falls head over heels in love with, unaware that he has a wife and child in the capital. She finally sets him free and remains fatally unhappy in this piece. “It would take a whole newspaper page to praise all the performers appropriately”, praises Der Standard. Of particular note is

Svetlana Aksenova as Zazá who “suffers the whole spectrum from intimate affection to raging jealousy and mute despair”, Nikolai Schukoff (Milio) “shows himself as a daredevil and a depressed mourner”, Christopher Maltman as Cascart “leads energetically and touchingly his already lost fight for his beloved.” An evening worth seeing and hearing!

Halka

At Theater an der Wien Stanislaw Moniuszko’s Polish national opera Halka is performed by a superb cast including Corinne Winters (“devotedly”), Piotr Beczala (“vocally outstanding”) and Tomasz Konieczny (“his acting is piercing”) (Der Standard). The Polish leading team, above all director Mariusz Trelinski, puts the plot into a supercooled crime aesthetic. The ORF Radio Symphonie-Orchester Wien under the baton of Lukasz Borowicz plays with perceptible delight. “A gripping opera evening” (Wiener Zeitung).