“Magnetic pull: Soprano Asmik Grigorian shines” (Salzburger Nachrichten) “Madness in close-up” (BR Klassik): Director Benedict Andrews plunges Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame at the Bavarian State Opera into a cinematic film noir aesthetic, in which the characters regularly seem to vanish into shadow and mystery. Brandon Jovanovich “plays a credibly broken anti-hero as Hermann” (Münchner Merkur) and Asmik Grigorian as Lisa once again steals the show with her unerring dramatic and vocal skills. Conductor Aziz Shokhakimov gives a convincing debut at the podium of the state orchestra, managing a “dramatically stirring, propulsive interpretation” (FAZ).
Giuditta
Giuditta was to be Franz Lehár’s ticket to the world of opera: His “Spieloper” or “musical comedy” was triumphantly premiered in January 1934. Intoxicating melodies and borrowings from Puccini, whom Lehár admired, and his tragically loving characters stand alongside operetta-like innocuousness. However, the end of the plot is by no means cheerful; the lovers Giuditta and Octavio go their separate ways in resignation. The “musical comedy” thus only seems to stand in stark contrast to the social present of the emerging war, the 1930s. Director Christoph Marthaler, known for his whimsically beautiful theatre evenings, picks up on the ambivalence of Lehár’s characters, who vacillate between opulence and resignation, between euphoria and the abyss. Orchestral music by Béla Bartók, Erich Wolfgang Korngold or Dmitri Shostakovich, songs by Viktor Ullmann, Hanns Eisler or Alban Berg as well as excerpts from Sladek oder Die schwarze Armee by Ödön von Horváth radically place Lehár’s operetta in the context of its time of origin. Giuditta in Christoph Marthaler’s version tells a love story within the turmoil and confusion of the times, brilliantly realised by a top-class cast led by Vida Mikneviciute and Daniel Behle.
War and Peace
This ‘War and Peace’ will go down as a milestone in Jurowski’s tenure at the State Opera, and in Tcherniakov’s often divisive career. They rise to meet the moment, overcoming the work’s near untenability not only to argue for its place in the canon, but also to use it as a vehicle for a passionate statement against Russian nationalism.” (The New York Times) Prokofiev’s opera War and Peace is one of the monumental works in opera history and rarely performed because of its sheer violence and complexity: More than 70 characters are cast for this four-hour opera, which is based on Tolstoy’s masterpiece. With the appropriate preparation time, the Bayerische Staatsoper, one of the world’s top opera houses, has taken on this major work under the baton of its general music director Vladimir Jurowski and staged by Dmitri Tcherniakov, one of the most celebrated directors and born and raised in Russia – at the same time an expert on the subject.
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).
Rusalka
This highly acclaimed production from the Bayerische Staatsoper was a veritable sensation and a double revelation. That of the powerful and fascinating re-interpretation of Antonín Dvo?ák’s fairy-tale opera “Rusalka” and that of the young, up-and-coming Latvian soprano, Kristine Opolais, whose performance was hailed by the press as “one of the most vivid and striking accomplishments seen on an opera stage in a long time” (Vienna’s daily “Der Standard”). With her velvety soprano, her captivating beauty and her tremendous stage presence, Opolais perfectly embodies the role of the water nymph who becomes a human in order to find love, but loses all hope when her prince is seduced by a sensual princess.