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.
Orlando furioso
Certainly more than just the composer of the Four Seasons, Vivaldi also wrote hundreds of largely famous instrumental works, and his glorious church music is well known; but it wasn’t until recent decades that his operas – of which he is said to have written more than fifty – were resurrected. Orlando furioso occupies a central and very significant place among Vivaldi’s works. Not only does the whole score of this opera demonstrate its composer’s full, creative maturity, but its outstanding features are also an extraordinary musical beauty, an attractive recitative line, and a balance thus created between the various parts of the dramatic and musical whole. This exceptional musical achievement was no doubt partly due to the famous theme of the original story, as well as the literary and dramatic qualities of a first-rate libretto. Pier Luigi Pizzi’s 1979 production of Orlando furioso in Verona marked the beginning of contemporary international interest in Antonio Vivaldi’s operas. Ten years later the same director once more produced this work at the San Francisco Opera. A Californian public greeted the baroque magnificence of this production with great enthusiasm, and both the daily and specialist press outdid each other in eulogies of praise for the director, his new staging, the vocal casting of all the roles and the musical quality of the whole opera.