Giuditta was to be Franz Lehár’s ticket to the world of opera: His “Spieloper” or “musical comedy” was triumphantly premiered in January 1934. Intoxicating melodies and borrowings from Puccini, whom Lehár admired, and his tragically loving characters stand alongside operetta-like innocuousness. However, the end of the plot is by no means cheerful; the lovers Giuditta and Octavio go their separate ways in resignation. The “musical comedy” thus only seems to stand in stark contrast to the social present of the emerging war, the 1930s. Director Christoph Marthaler, known for his whimsically beautiful theatre evenings, picks up on the ambivalence of Lehár’s characters, who vacillate between opulence and resignation, between euphoria and the abyss. Orchestral music by Béla Bartók, Erich Wolfgang Korngold or Dmitri Shostakovich, songs by Viktor Ullmann, Hanns Eisler or Alban Berg as well as excerpts from Sladek oder Die schwarze Armee by Ödön von Horváth radically place Lehár’s operetta in the context of its time of origin. Giuditta in Christoph Marthaler’s version tells a love story within the turmoil and confusion of the times, brilliantly realised by a top-class cast led by Vida Mikneviciute and Daniel Behle.
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Bregenz’s Tales of Hoffmann is different from everything you saw before. The New York Times praised the “thoughtfulness and creativity” of Stefan Herheim’s new production, devised by the director as a search for one’s own self in a sparkling drag show. A “shining-toned” (NYT) Hoffmann is embodied by tenor Daniel Johansson in the title role. He is supported by a fantastic cast: “Rachel Frenkel is positively ideal as Muse and Niklausse” (Kurier), Kerstin Avemo as Olympia is “endowed with brilliant, cheekily extemporized coloraturas” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), Michael Volle sings the parts of Lindorf, Coppélius, Dr. Miracle and Dapertutto, “the work’s four villains, with warmth and intensity” (NYT) and Mandy Fredrich is a “finelyphrased Antonia” (Kurier).
Così fan tutte
Who loves whom in Così fan tutte, Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s cruelly comic reflection on desire, fidelity and betrayal? Or have the confusions to which the main characters subject one another ensured that in spite of the heartfelt love duets and superficially fleetfooted comedy nothing will work any longer and that a sense of emotional erosion has replaced true feelings? Così fan tutte is a timeless work full of questions that affect us all. The Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke once said that he was merely being precise and did not want to distort reality. In only his second opera production after Don Giovanni in 2006, he presents what ARTE described as a “disillusioned vision
of love in an ice-cold, realistic interpretation”. And according to the online version of ZEIT, six “fabulous vocal soloists cast from 120 international applicants” bring gentle melancholy and moving vulnerability to Haneke‘s radical staging.
Bregenz Festival 2015: Les Contes d’Hoffmann
“The opera visit of the year – Bregenz is showing a Tales of Hoffmann that makes you forget everything you saw before.” (FAZ) Sparkling with creativity, Stefan Herheim’s new staging of Jacques Offenbach’s opera Les contes d’Hoffmann at the Bregenz Festival, starring Kerstin Avemo, Mandy Fredrich, Rachel Frenkel, Daniel Johansson and Michael Volle, was received by an enthusiastic audience with standing ovation and frenetic applause. The international press agreed wholeheartedly: The New York Times praised the “thoughtfulness and creativity” of the new production, devised by the director as a search for one’s own self in a sparkling drag show.