“The whole world is a jest, man was born a great jester…” So goes the brilliant conclusion to Verdi’s Falstaff, an opera inspired by Shakespeare’s beloved comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor. The virtuosic score requires a particularly talented cast, not to mention a truly exceptional conductor. Herbert von Karajan perfectly fits the bill, and this performance featuring the Wiener Philharmoniker and an all-star group of singers is clearly worthy of Verdi’s powerful work, a masterpiece whose comic facade thinly veils the complex and sometimes even tragic characters’ struggles.
Fidelio
Madama Butterfly
Director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (1932-1988) has been called “a weaver of magic, a curator of the sublime, a master choreographer, a footlose farceur” (The Wall Street Journal). One of the most imaginative director- designers of our times, Ponnelle was also the first significant opera director to have a large portion of his work preserved on film. In his chilling and poignant account of “Madama Butterfly”, he tried to use all the typical resources of film such as flashbacks, slow motion and “inner monologues”, where the singers do not move their lips to sing. Under the direction of Herbert von Karajan, the stellar cast includes Mirella Freni, Placido Domingo and Christa Ludwig.
Così fan Tutte
Karl Böhm knew that the quality of his opera productions depended heavily on the choice of the right singers for each role. “When I set my mind on doing a certain opera with a certain cast, and it doesn’t work, then I become furious and throw a fit,” he once said. In this “Così” production, Böhm has gathered some of the greatest Mozart specialists of the 20th century: Gundula Janowitz, a warm, lyric soprano whose Munich “Pamina” under Knappertsbusch was one of the high points of her early career, before she went on to sing at all major opera houses as well as the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals; Christa Ludwig, who began singing under Karl Böhm at the Vienna State Opera in 1955, and who was later hailed as the best Mozart and Strauss mezzo-soprano of her generation; Luigi Alva, the Peruvian tenor whose light and elegant voice has made him one of the most sought-after lyrical tenors for Rossini and Mozart roles; Hermann Prey, whose rich baritone has captivated not only the opera public the world over but also lovers of the German Lied; Walter Berry, who has sung practically the entire repertoire of great Mozart bass-baritone roles at the Salzburg Festival, the Met, Covent Garden and the Vienna State Opera.
Birgit Nilsson – A league of her own
An intimate portrait of Birgit Nilsson (1918–2005) on the occasion of her centennial on 17th May 2018: The Swedish soprano had an incredible technique and was the world’s leading dramatic soprano between 1955 and 1975. Rare TV and archive footage shows Nilsson at work, and is complemented by interviews with Plácido Domingo, Otto Schenk, James Levine, Nina Stemme, Jonas Kaufmann, Marilyn Horne, Christa Ludwig and many others. The film reveals a sensitive woman behind the honest, down to earth, quick-witted artist, who had “a voice like fire and ice” (Antonio Pappano). The documentary was shot at the farm in Bastad/Sweden, where Nilsson grew up and spent the summers until the end of her life, at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, where the legendary Wagnerian singer made her operatic debut in 1946, and in places like the Bayreuth Festival, the Wiener Staatsoper and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where Nilsson was the star and box office draw.
Falstaff
Based, in part, on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is Verdi’s last work for the stage – and only his second comic opera. And yet the humour in this multilayered masterpiece is distinctly wry, for all the main characters exhibit an array of human weaknesses that are implacably exposed by Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito. In this legendary performance from the Salzburg Festival 1982, Herbert von Karajan is not only leading a stunning cast of singers featuring the Wiener Philharmoniker, he too directed the opera, in the amazing set design of Günther Schneider-Siemssen.
Masterclass: Christa Ludwig
Christa Ludwig is acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s most explorative and complete vocal artists. Her professional singing career spanned five decades. Two public masterclasses, recorded at the Volkstheater in Vienna, show her working with young singers set on finding success on the operatic stage. Candid, humorous and encouraging, she focuses on the dramatic truth expressed in the arias of their choice and helps them to communicate this in their interpretations.
Christa Ludwig – Portrait
High Performance Sports – Singing Opera
What do Jonas Kaufmann, Anja Harteros, Piotr Beczala and Daniel Behle have in common? Besides being internationally acclaimed singers, they’re all “vocal athletes” who keep their voices in shape. In this “rewarding documentary” (Opernglas), filmmakers Barbara and Wolfgang Wunderlich team up with Thomas Voigt to examine the physical and psychological hurdles that constantly face professional singers. Next to theoretical matters, the program offers a generous selection of musical excerpts that illustrate the topic at hand and shed light into the complex interplay of every singer’s body and mind.