Stealing the show of this “Carmen” production is Anna Netrebko as Micaela, who gives the role a strikingly authentic touch. The lead role is sung and acted with a panther-like grace by Bulgarian mezzo Nadia Krasteva. She and her equally dazzling fellow leads Massimo Giordano as Don José and Ildebrando D’Arcangelo as Escamillo infuse this revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1978 production with drama and irrepressible life. Imparting his own personal stamp on the music is the young Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons, who leads the Orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper with contagious passion and fresh, brisk tempi.
Rusalka
This highly acclaimed production from the Bayerische Staatsoper, a powerful and fascinating re-interpretation of Dvorák’s fairy-tale opera Rusalka, was a revelation: the young, up-and-coming Latvian soprano, Kristine Opolais, whose performance was rightly hailed by the press as “one of the most vivid and striking accomplishments seen on an opera stage in a long time” (Vienna’s leading daily Der Standard). With her supple and velvety soprano voice, her captivating physical beauty and her hauntingly moving stage presence, Kristine Opolais perfectly embodies the role of the water nymph who becomes a human being in order to find love.
La forza del destino
“The cast is a dream team,” wrote the Financial Times after the premiere of this production of Verdi’s La forza del destino at the Wiener Staatsoper. Powerful performances by Nina Stemme, who gives a fullblooded portrayal of Leonora, Alastair Miles as her father, Salvatore Licitra as Alvaro, Carlos Álvarez as Don Carlo and Nadia Krasteva as Preziosilla resulted in one of the Viennese ensemble’s most celebrated achievements of recent years. Zubin Mehta leads the Staatsoper Orchestra with agility, subtleness and relaxed mastery, and right from the start David Pountney establishes an atmosphere of entrapment by fate. “A perfect utopia.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
Verdi, La Forza del Destino
Ever since their magnificent and hugely successful performance in Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at the Bavarian State Opera, Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann have come to be regarded as the world of opera’s perfect couple. In Giuseppe Verdi’s “La forza del destino”, the two returned and once again played two lovers desperately trying to be together but kept apart by the forces of destiny. Their performance at the Munich Opera Festival met with “explosive outbursts of applause for the new heights
reached in singing” (dpa).