«Le Concert de Paris» is an exceptional event held each year on Bastille Day at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, as a prelude to the traditional July 14th fireworks display. Two of Radio France’s most prestigious musical institutions, the Orchestre National de France and the Radio France Chorus, under the baton of maestro Alain Altinoglu, propose a top-quality programme, giving pride of place to the voice and brings together some of the world’s greatest soloists, including Khatia Buniatishvili, Roberto Alagna, René Pape, Gautier Capuçon, Gaëlle Arquez, Jakub Orlinski and many more!
Mythos Carmen
What do the great characters in the history of opera have to do with our own lives? “Mythos Carmen”: modern re-enactments place the respective operatic character squarely in the middle of our present times. Individual chapters examine the key issues of the character, which are spread out in the form of a kaleidoscope. International stars of opera, singers, conductors and directors explain what continues to fascinate us about the characters to this day. They explain their own take on the various heroes and describe what makes the operatic characters mythological. In doing so, they provide a distinctive, new and fresh perspective on the great works of music. The film is augmented by footage shot behind the scenes, at the places where the operas were written, and with a répétiteur, allowing the film to move through our present times emotionally guided by the opera.
La Traviata
Explaining Riccardo Muti’s choice of a group of young, even very young, singers for the production of Verdi’s “La Traviata” staged by Liliana Cavani and premiered in 1990, a spokesman from the La Scala opera house reported: “We did not want to follow the path of comparisons with the past, but attempted to put together a little group of talented youths we had already been working with and whom we will be working with intensively in the future. We hope that the love of music will be greater than a the sometimes hysterical and divisive excitement that arises around certain operas.” Among the gifted young singers in this performance are Tiziana Fabbricini as Violetta Valéry and Roberto Alagna as Alfred Germont. The aristocrat of conductors, the autocrat of the baton, Riccardo Muti cuts a noble figure at the head of any orchestra, and ennobles every ensemble through his charismatic personality and red-blooded musicality. In many respects, including his unwillingness to compromise over artistic matters, he is reminiscent of Arturo Toscanini, who was also a demanding ruler at the podium. His rise to international fame set in with his guest conductorships at the Salzburg Festival in 1971 and at the head of the Berlin Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1972. Muti became principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra a few years later, and was named its music director in 1980. Always a conductor of both the symphonic and operatic repertoire, Muti advanced to the post of music director of La Scala in Milan in 1986. The 1990s saw Muti consolidating his reputation at the head of this venerable institution, as well as in countless other high-caliber venues around the world. Today he is one of the undisputed giants among the leading conductors of the world.