The proven Richard Strauss trio of Renée Fleming, Sophie Koch and Christian Thielemann gets together once again at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, which continues its series of triumphs after “Rosenkavalier”. In this colorful and humorous staging by Philippe Arlaud, Strauss specialist Thielemann leads his first opera at the head of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, which performed the world premieres of nine Strauss operas. While Renée Fleming dazzles in her role debut as the spurned Ariadne, Sophie Koch, Robert Dean Smith and Jane Archibald prove themselves worthy counterparts of the American soprano.
Der Rosenkavalier
“The best of the best assembled on stage,” wrote Germany’s leading newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung after the premiere of Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. Indeed, it would be hard to find a more ideal cast for this late-Romantic Rococo pastiche anywhere in the world. As the Marschallin, stellar soprano Renée Fleming uses her velvety tones and autumnal shadings to complement the youthfully lyrical and dynamic voice of Sophie Koch as her young lover Octavian. Diana Damrau’s Sophie enhances the trio’s sparkle with her ethereal high notes. Next to Franz Hawlata as a swaggering Baron Ochs and the always impressive Franz Grundheber as Faninal, the Baden-Baden production rounds off its male leads with international tenor star Jonas Kaufmann as the “Italian Singer.” Leading his Münchner Philharmoniker, acclaimed Romantic specialist Christian Thielemann revels in Strauss’s lustrous melancholy and obtains a rarely heard transparency from the brass and woodwinds.
Der Rosenkavalier
With their “comedy for music” in the spirit of Mozart, Richard Strauss and his inspired librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal created the most popular of all their works and one of the most frequently performed operas of all time. In the guise of a gossamer-light and supremely entertaining high-class comedy, Der Rosenkavalier touches on universal themes such as love, sex, marital fidelity and the changes that human relations undergo over time – and all of it set to music of the most glorious kind imaginable. With its stellar cast under the inspired direction of Harry Kupfer, the 2014 Salzburg Festival’s production of Der Rosenkavalier was one of the most internationally acclaimed interpretations of the work since the start of the new millennium. “A musical feast from beginning to end“ (Wiener Zeitung).
Christian Thielemann conducts Chausson, Debussy and Fauré
Christian Thielemann conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in a programme of late Romantic French masterpieces, accompanied by the outstanding voices of Christiane Karg, Sophie Koch and Adrian Eröd. Gabriel Fauré’s heart-easing Requiem with its famous “Pie Jesu” is turned into a “magical moment” by Karg’s “divine” way of singing (Kulturradio). Ernest Chausson’s haunting song cycle Poème de l’amour et de la mer, in which Sophie Koch performs “superbly with her dramatic, yet light voice” (FAZ), constitutes the Requiem’s temporal counterpart. Thematically bridging the two works are Debussy’s Danse sacrée and Danse profane for harp and strings, with the orchestra’s principal harp Marie-Pierre Langlamet creating “cascades of artful polyphony in delicate nuances” (FAZ).
Festive Advent Concert at the Frauenkirche Dresden 2011
Mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch and baritone Thomas Hampson are the stars of this year’s traditional Advent concert in the historic Frauenkirche in Dresden. Conductor Christian Thielemann heads this particularly lavish program with the Staatskapelle Dresden in the famous Baroque church. Together with the State Opera Chorus, and in a setting of resplendent beauty, they perform inspiring and festive works such as arias from Bach’s Mass in B minor and his Christmas Oratorio. The festive Advent concerts have become an institution since the year 2000. The TV broadcast of the concert is watched by almost two million viewers in Germany alone.
Ariadne auf Naxos
Here is one of the truly overwhelming successes in recent opera history: Christian Thielemann’s sensational return to the Vienna State Opera to conduct his first-ever performances there of Richard Strauss, with an ideal cast in an acclaimed production of Ariadne auf Naxos, featuring Peter Matic, Sophie Koch, Soile Isokoski and Johan Botha, stage directed by Sven-Eric Bechtolf. “A triumph […] world stars and ensemble shine” (Die Presse). “Strauss in all his glory”(Wiener Zeitung).
Salzburg Festival: Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier
“Harry Kupfer and Franz Welser-Möst re-create a wonderful Rosenkavalier.” (FAZ) “Cheers for Welser-Möste and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. (…) The best music theatre production ever of Salzburg Festival.” (Neue Osnarbrücker Zeitung) “With eyes wide shut you could hear the flurries of Straussian invention whirring, whirling, whistling and waltzing round the orchestra pit, making the score sound like a three-hour symphonic poem with voices rather than a “comedy in music”. (Financial Times)
Così fan Tutte (Mozart 22)
Women are like that, women act that way – no matter how you translate the words “Così fan tutte,” it boils down to this: women are impossible to understand! The philosopher Don Alfonso, however, believes he knows how to read women’s hearts and is ready to test his theory in a little experiment of love. When Ursel and Karl-Ernst Herrmann’s production of “Così” begins, we find Don Alfonso playing with fire. First it’s only a cigarette, but then it’s the flames of love that he’s stoking. And the instrument he’s using is ancient, well-worn and very effective: jealousy. Don Alfonso is convinced that the sweethearts of the two soldiers Ferrando and Guglielmo, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, would be unfaithful to them, given the opportunity. The two soldiers are convinced otherwise and bet with him. With the help of the young ladies’ maid Despina, Alfonso devises an elaborate scheme to make the two young women believe their lovers have gone off to the army. Then he brings back the two young men, now disguised as “Albanians.” Dorabella and Fiordiligi are smitten, and soon fall in love with the handsome strangers, but not with the “right” ones… In their light-footed, witty and poetic staging, the Herrmanns took advantage of the wide stage of the Grosses Festspielhaus to create a luminous and elegantly minimalist landscape dotted with a few sparing but stylish props. The lovers are portrayed with verve and compelling emotional confusion by Ana María Martinez (Fiordiligi) and Sophie Koch (Dorabella) as the two sisters, and Stéphane Degout (Guglielmo) and Shawn Mathey (Ferrando) as the cocky soldiers who learn that lying isn’t the best way to find out the truth. Thomas Allen (Don Alfonso) and the great Helen Donath (Despina) add their incomparable stage presence to the action. Conductor Manfred Honeck entices a wondrous delicacy and tenderness from the Vienna Philharmonic. Coming after “Figaro” (1786) and “Don Giovanni” (1787), “Così fan tutte” (1790) is the third of the magnificent trio of operas on libretti by Lorenzo da Ponte. “Così” has long been problematic on account of its libretto, which in earlier days was decried as immoral and in more recent times as politically incorrect. But the beauty of the music and the psychological truth at the heart of the text have ultimately redeemed this opera buffa, which Nikolaus Harnoncourt calls “the saddest opera in the world.”