Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The Lithuanian soprano Ausrine Stundyte as vengeful and traumatized Elektra turns the opening of the Festival into a real knockout performance! Her sister Chrysotemis is sung by her compatriot Asmik Grigorian, who made her international breakthrough as acclaimed Salome at the 2018 Salzburg Festival, and whose performance once again draws the audience into spell. Tanja Ariane Baumgartner as Klytämnestra, Derek Welton as Orest and Michael Laurenz as Ägisth complete an ensemble of top-notch singers. The staging by Krzysztof Warlikowski of this work about matricide, obsession, revenge and physical degradation is a deep psychological study of a broken family. Franz Welser-Möst brings his trademark flair to the pit where the brilliantly effervescent and then again heartrendingly gentle playing Wiener Philharmoniker create gloriously exultant Strauss moments. “To have chosen Elektra of all pieces, was audacious – and to have brought it off so well, triumphant”
Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades)
Hans Neuenfels, the luminary of modern director’s theatre, provides a compelling, multi-layered staging of Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame at Salzburg Festival. In the stark, mostly abstract sets by Christian Schmidt, Neuenfels “draws gripping performances from a strong cast” (The New York Times) including Brandon Jovanovich and Evgenia
Muraveva in the title roles of Herman and Lisa and legendary singer Hanna Schwarz as Countess. Mariss Jansons, “a compelling director in his element” (The New York Times) makes his rare appearance as an opera conductor, at the helm of the Wiener Philharmoniker – “Another triumph in this hot festival summer!“ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). Mariss Jansons, “maybe the best connoisseur of this unjustly neglected opera” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), turns this Queen of Spades with as much verve as sensitivity into a “captivating musical drama” (Die Zeit).
Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)
W.A. Mozart’s timeless masterpiece at the Salzburg Festival is always an event! Especially when Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) receives such a “spectacular and virtuosic staging” (Le Figaro) by director Lydia Steier. Steier introduces the role of the grandfather, a narrator reading the opera like a fairy tale to his three grandchildren, performed by the famous actor Klaus Maria Brandauer (Out of Africa, James Bond). This ‘trick’ in combination with the gigantic moveable sets by stage designer Katharina Schlipf, allows new views on Mozart’s magical opera, with its different worlds. Thanks to conductor Constantinos Carydis, who “seems to breath with the music” (Tagesspiegel), there is a new Mozart to be heard too: Carydis draws “precise phrasing and plenty and of crisp articulation” (Financial Times) from “the musicians of the great Vienna Philharmonic” (New York Times).
Making of “Die Jahreszeiten”
“Jubilation!” (Kronen Zeitung) in the Great Festival Hall in Salzburg for Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Seasons with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. The conductor tunes his “Wiener” to peak performance and shows as few others can how “to coax the tenderest expressive pianissimo shiver from the violins and violas into the almost inaudible”, enthuses the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Salzburg Festival 2023: Macbeth
With his Macbeth, Giuseppe Verdi broke with the operatic conventions of the time and created one of his darkest and most abysmal works. Directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski, the timeless drama unfolds in a new interpretation that takes the audience on an intense journey into human abysses. An opera of this kind demands not only outstanding voices but also outstanding actors. “Vladislav Sulimsky is forceful and brutish in the title role, at times truly frightening, always utterly assured.” (Financial Times) Asmik Grigorian is giving her debut as Lady Macbeth and performs “with an urgency of expression that needs no further explanation.” (Salzburger Nachrichten) “Her singing becomes a victory over expressive resistance.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine) “Philippe Jordan celebrated a triumph on the podium of the Wiener Philharmoniker” (Kurier), his “Macbeth crackles with power and electricity, propelled by its own velocity. The orchestra attacks the score with relish.” (Financial Times)
Salzburg Festival 2023: Le nozze di Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro is Lorenzo Da Ponte’s and Mozart‘s first of their three jointly created operas about attempts at interpersonal relationships: a turbulent comedy with erotic entanglements, which was not a harmless comedy even in Mozart’s day. Director Martin Kušej moves the drama of love and jealousy to a mafia-like urban milieu where conflicts are fought out with pistols. Young French conductor Raphaël Pichon, “original sound expert” (Der Tagesspiegel) and for the first time on the podium of the Wiener Philharmoniker, leads a young ensemble of singers around clan boss Almaviva (“vocally flawlessly brilliant: Andrè Schuen”, Hamburger Abendblatt). “Kušej’s staging is musical, Pichon’s conducting theatrical; the two work together to a degree that is far more rare than it should be. Every detail has been carefully thought through, and the symbiosis is breathtaking.” (Financial Times)
Salzburg Festival 2023: Falstaff
Falstaff is Giuseppe Verdi’s third opera based on a Shakespeare play and the last opera he composed. Designed as a comedy of errors, it illustrates the abysses of human inadequacies. Christoph Marthaler, “that wondrous theatre magician” (Tiroler Tageszeitung), stages the comedy as a tongue-in-cheek Orson Welles homage, who himself
impersonated and filmed “Falstaff” in 1965, and moves the action from Windsor around 1400 to a chaotic film set of the 1960s: a confusion of identities and genres. “Avantgardiste conductor and Falstaff debutant Ingo Metzmacher gave his Falstaff orchestra the ride of its life. It was mighty and infectious.” (operatoday.com) The Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley in the title role is convincing with his “magnificent playing marked by precise laconism” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), Russian soprano Elena Stikhinas in the role of Alice “enchants with heavenly heights” (Südwest Presse). “Creative and innovative” Kurier
Salzburg Festival 2023: The Greek Passion
Bohuslav Martinu’s opera The Greek Passion, here in the 1961 version, is based on the novel The re-crucified Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. The opera develops the Christian doctrine of “love thy neighbour” ad absurdum, as a group of refugees are driven out of a little Greek village just as the village is putting on a Passion play for Holy Week. The opera is a pessimistic plea for humanity, made in the awareness that humanity must always wrestle anew with its own egoism. Director Simon Stone “creates a modern parable, somehow both contemporary and timeless.” (The Times) For the last of his 16 operas, Martinu developed a tonal language which combined his early musical experiences with elements of Greek folklore, Greek Orthodox liturgy and dance music. Maxime Pascal at the podium of the Wiener Philharmoniker for the first time, “unfolds a musical and dramatic intensity that makes your hair stand on end, both in the tender outbursts and the violent ones. A maestro of his time.” (Le Figaro). “A highlight of this year’s Salzburg Festival”
The Times