Topping the cast of this Zurich production is one of the world’s most acclaimed Falstaff performers of his time, Ambrogio Maestri. His powerful voice, acting skills, stage presence and nimble lightness blend together magnificently. At the head of the Zurich Opera Orchestra is its principal conductor Daniele Gatti. Under his baton, Verdi’s commedia lirica – based on Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” – is a fireworks of high spirits. Adding to the merriment is a cast of outstanding singers including Barbara Frittoli and Yvonne Naef, as well as Javier Camarena and Eva Liebau.
Falstaff
“Everything in this world is a joke,” says Falstaff, and these words are truly given weight by Ambrogio Maestri, one of the finest Falstaffs of our time. The Italian baritone brings a powerful, versatile voice to his role, but also brings to his character a hilarious buffo quality. Daniele Gatti, one of the most acclaimed opera conductors working today, leads a stunning cast of singers, including Barbara Frittoli as Alice Ford. Genuinely warm italianità in all of the music-making, combined with a boisterous production by stage director Sven-Eric Bechtolf, turns Verdi’s commedia lirica into a fireworks display of high spirits as well as what the Neue Zürcher Zeitung called “musically and dramaturgically a feast of life and of love of life”.
Salzburg Festival 2012: Ariadne auf Naxos
“The vocals are pure gold”, wrote the Berliner Zeitung. Emily Magee masters the challenge of her complex character’s richly nuanced vocal lines, while Elena Mosuc as Zerbinetta produced her coloratura cascades with breathtaking ease, and Jonas Kaufmann received accolades from the critics for his role debut as the “best Bacchus ever” (Berliner Zeitung). Daniel Harding and the Vienna Philharmonic provided the necessary musical foundations to this performance of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, in a special version for the Salzburg Festival created by Sven-Eric Bechtolf of the original version from 1912. Written immediately after the great success of Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos was a combination of mythological opera and Molière’s drama Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, though Strauss expunged all trace of the latter in his second version of 1916. To mark the centenary of the first version, a sensational project has created a daring production fulfilling the composer’s original dream of a “Gesamtkunstwerk”.
The Giacomo Variations
‘The Giacomo Variations’ is a chamber opera play based about the late Giacomo Casanova, who, in the face of his approaching death, is still trying to find out, what he was living for, if not only to be coveted and desired by the woman he loves. Giacomo, played by John Malkovich, presents his memories and stories to impress Countess Isabella, the beautiful young sister of his host Karl Emanuel Count von Waldstein and of course has his try on the nurse, the seamstress and the kitchen maid, while he is developing his philosophical view on love, medicine, fashion, and cookery. The play by Michael Sturminger with music concept by Michael Haselböck is based on opera scenes by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte.