“A ‘Carmen’ dominated by emotionality”, wrote the press about this unforgettable interpretation of Georges Bizet’s masterpiece from Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu with an outstanding quartet of lead vocalists and a visually stimulating staging by Calixto Bieito. Conducted by Marc Piollet, the production features Béatrice Uria-Monzon as “a splendid and sensual” (elPeriódico) Carmen, Roberto Alagna as Don José, Marina Poplavskaya as Micaela and Erwin Schrott as Escamillo. Stage director Calixto Bieito conjures up a sensual, realistic atmosphere with sparse but powerfully symbolic props.
Tannhäuser
“A real feast of music! Where to begin, where to end with praise for this Tannhäuser at the Berlin Staatsoper in the Schillertheater? It sounds the way one has always dreamt of it
but all too rarely heard it”, reported the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with considerable enthusiasm. This was due above all to Barenboim’s musical magic: “It is with nuance and fine balance that Richard Wagner’s music now rises from the orchestra pit” (FAZ), borne aloft by brilliant singers. Peter Seiffert in particular as Tannhäuser celebrates a true “triumph”, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Staged by choreographer Sasha Waltz on a fantastic stage by Pia Maier Schriever with a circular tunnel of light in the manner
of Hieronymus Bosch, the Berlin Tannhäuser deserves to be described as “world-class” (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
Otello
“An amazing range, with fresh young lows and girlish highs, full, glowing middle and high registers, a timbre of silk, champagne and sandpaper, a great lyrical-dramatic soprano,” wrote Berlin’s Tagesspiegel about Marina Poplavskaya. The Moscow native was clearly “the queen of this operatic performance,” as the eminent critic Joachim Kaiser put it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and perhaps the most dazzling discovery of this Salzburg Festival production of Verdi’s “Otello.” Poplavskaya’s Desdemona shares the limelight on the stage of Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus with her partner Aleksandrs Antonenko, an up-and-coming Latvian tenor with an impressive stage presence and a light, heady timbre that gives his Otello a youthful note.
Carmen
In this prestigious production at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, world-famous and highly controversial stage director Calixto Bieito, admired for his raw and evocative stagings, sees in Carmen the embodiment of the mythical gypsy and touches upon sensitive issues such as racism, xenophobia and right-wing politics. Bieito conjures up a sensual and realistic atmosphere full of powerful symbolism. An outstanding quartet of vocal stars, led by a “splendid and sensual” (El Periódico) Béatrice Uria-Monzon in the title role, delivers one of the most exciting Carmens in recent years: Roberto Alagna as Don José, Erwin Schrott as Escamillo and Marina Poplavskya as Micaëla.
Tutto Verdi – The Operas Vol. 3, 1855 – 1893
Otello
TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances. “This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI
Verdi was over seventy when he set about raising Italian opera to a whole new level, succeeding magnificently in combining two traditions in his penultimate masterpiece. Based on Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, Otello not only sums up the history of Italian opera since Rossini but at the same time looks far into the future.