FIVE OUTSTANDING OPERAS FROM THE LEGENDARY TEATRO ALLA SCALA: AIDA: “A perfect coup de théâtre” (Giornale della musica). A “stellar cast” (La Stampa) I DUE FOSCARI: The Financial Times was deeply moved by Domingo’s performance, calling his interpretation of the role “sublime” DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE: Ádám Fischer “gets the best out of the Academy Orchestra with delicate execution and humane phrasing” (Die Presse) LE NOZZE DI FIGARO: “… when Diana Damrau enters as the Countess, we get a performance of special gravitas. Even the orchestra, under Franz Welser-Möst’s baton, melts to such grace.” (Financial Times) DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL: A „masterful use of light and silhouettes“ by Giorgio Strehler. (Milano Post) „Extraordinary, a wonder …“ (Corriere Della Sera)
Le nozze di Figaro
For the 225th anniversary of Mozart’s death, La Scala Theatre presents a new production of Le nozze di Figaro that had been entrusted to the extraordinary director Frederic Wake-Walker (author of a production of La finta giardiniera which was the revelation of the Glyndebourne Festival in 2014). He focusses the action of the piece on the instability of love: “Le nozze di Figaro presents us with an impossibility – a world where everyone is loving and forgiving.” The approach to his direction is “elaborate and very innovative” and “also musically, the new production of Figaro is worth a tour to Milan.” (NZZ) “the cast is magnificient.” (Kurier) “… when Diana Damrau enters as the Countess, we get a performance of special gravitas. Even the orchestra, under Franz Welser-Möst’s baton, melts to such grace.” (Financial Times)
Festive Gala from the Semperoper Dresden
In this edition of the Staatskapelle Dresden’s New Year’s Eve concert, every classical music fan is sure to get their money’s worth. Exceptional pianist Igor Levit performs Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, perhaps the most famous of Mozart’s piano concertos. “Transparent, without the slightest scratch, he mastered his part, attentive to the orchestra. At times it seemed as if Levit was stroking the keys, only to grow into brilliant virtuosity.” (Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten) South-African soprano Golda Schultz (“a voice with an almost immeasurable range of colours, effortlessly guided and golden in bloom”, Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten), Czech mezzo-soprano Štepánka Pucálková and Ukrainian baritone Iurii Samoilov take the audience into the world of opera and operetta – from with love arias from Die Zauberflöte, Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro to Strauss, Offenbach, Franz Lehár and Strauss II. Conductor Tugan Sokhiev “proved himself to be a man of unerring precision and precisely differentiated orchestral work.” (Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten) “A splendid programme with splendid soloists” (Dresdner Morgenpost)
Salzburg Easter Festival 2021: Mozart Requiem
Artistic director Christian Thielemann opens the Salzburg Easter Festival 2021 with Mozart’s Requiem. The excellent Bachelor Salzburg and a top-class quartet of soloists with Golda Schultz, Christa Mayer, Sebastian Kohlhepp and René Pape make the concert a dignified commemoration of the dead. “Mozart’s Requiem sounded at the highest level, with great balance and attention to well-dosed, rather restrained, even reverent sound architecture. Here one realised once again how wonderful it can be when conductor and musicians are so unconditionally attuned to each other.” Kurier. PROGRAM: Mozart Requiem K. 626
Salzburg Festival 2017: La Clemenza di Tito
Deemed today’s most exciting Mozart conductor and highly acclaimed for his revolutionary Da-Ponte Cycle, Teodor Currentzis takes on Mozart’s final opera for his long awaited debut at the Salzburg Festival: “La clemenza di Tito”. The current Artistic Director of the Perm State Opera and Ballet Theatre is accompanied by his MusicAeterna and MusicAeterna Chamber Choir and joins forces with award winning director Peter Sellars, with whom he has established a successful long-term collaboration. Known himself as Mozart rebel for his unique contemporary stagings of Mozart’s operas, Sellars directs the opera also for the screen. “Peter Sellars’ picture language and precise direction are masterful!” (Der Spiegel)
Hope on the Road – South Africa
Together with his father, Daniel Hope travels to his native South Africa. 30 years after the end of apartheid (1994), he not only explores his family history there, but also the rousing music that was part of the political transformation of the rainbow nation. Golda Schultz, Vusi Mahlasela and many others support him in his work.
RCO: Mäkelä conducts Mahler 8
Performances of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony are not so common, especially on the anniversary of Mahler’s death. Led by their Chief Conductor Designate Klaus Mäkelä, Mahler’s ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ was the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s final contribution to the Concertgebouw’s Mahler Festival 2025. With four choirs—the Dutch National Radio Choir, the Laurens Symfonisch, Le Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris, and the Dutch National Children’s Choir— this huge choral ensemble demonstrated immense energy and power. Seven international soloists, sopranos Golda Schultz and Miriam Kutrowatz, altos Jennifer Johnston and Okka von der Damerau, tenor Giorgio Berrugi, bariton Michael Nagy, and bass Tareq Nazmi, were all formidable. “A monumental Eighth from Klaus Mäkelä and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra” (Bachtrack)