L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi is one of the earliest operas. It tells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, a young couple separated by fate and put to the test once again. In 1975, it was to be performed as faithfully as possible to the original, as it had been when it premiered more than 350 years earlier. First on stage in Zurich and later as a film production in Vienna. A radical vision by Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, directed by star director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. Harnoncourt brought back the historical sound experience. He meticulously sought out musicians who played period instruments and brought them together to form an ensemble. He succeeded in making the opera not only comprehensible but also captivating. Outstanding singers such as Anna-Lucia Richter, Rolando Villazón, Elsa Benoit, Äneas Humm and also Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s son Philipp comment on the legendary production from 50 years ago. The film is a testament to the artistry of the great musical innovator Harnoncourt.
Magic Moments of Music – Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim at Teatro Colón
In 2014, a memorable concert took place at the Teatro Colón: Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim as a piano duo on two pianos. Since their youth, the two have enjoyed an artistic friendship rich in magic moments of music. What happens when these very different personalities form a piano duo? The two superstars had already performed together almost everywhere in the world – but not in their hometown. Their first joint performance in Buenos Aires was a magic moment of music and a kind of folk festival in equal parts. During their stay in Buenos Aires, Argerich and Barenboim went in search of traces of the places where they met as children. And how does Daniel Barenboim himself remember the concert? He laughs: “It’s totally easy with Martha. It’s not like that with everyone. You can only fall in love with her.”
Die schweigsame Frau
Die schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman), the first and only joint work by Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig, was performed for the first time at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. The opera embodies comic opera in a new and unexpected way, starting with the genre name, which Strauss used here for the first and only time in his career. Compositionally, it is his most progressive work. With his new production of Richard Strauss’ opera, director Jan Philipp Gloger places social issues such as loneliness and housing shortages at the centre of the opera. The superb cast brings his ideas to life with “energetic performance and balanced vocal power” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). “What Thielemann conjures up from the orchestra pit is classical cinema at its finest.” (BZ)
Der Dreispitz
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) was one of the last brilliantly creative composers of the Romantic, nationalistic tradition. The original version of “The Three-Cornered Hat” was composed for a pantomime, “The Corregidor and the Miller’s Wife”, which was adapted from a short story, “El Sombrero de tres picos”, by Pedro de Alarcon. This was produced in Madrid in 1917. Soon after, when Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes were touring Spain, Diaghilev urged him to arrange it as a ballet. The first performance of the ballet version with choreography by Massine took place in July, 1919 at the Alhambra Theater in London. The choreographer, dancer and ballet director Antonio (born Antonio Ruiz Soler in 1922) was the most famous Spanish dancer of his generation. A purist in his solo dances, he has tried in his ballets to create a synthesis of classic-academic and Spanish dance. His choreography of “The Three-Cornered Hat” was produced for television in 1974.
Impressions about Herbert von Karajan
Commanding the podium with his slender figure, theatrical shock of hair and penetrating blue eyes, Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) projected the hieratic image of the conductor as officiant of some quasi-mystic rite. And anyone who ever saw him conduct live or on his many audiovisual recordings will agree that in his performances, music did indeed become a religion and Karajan its high-priest. Karajan embodied classical music in the general consciousness as an epoch-making conductor, media star, opera producer, festival director and festival founder. But in spite of his Promethean and widely varied activities, he remained a superb conductor, with a grasp of the standard orchestral and operatic repertory from Mozart to Schoenberg that was unsurpassed among his peers.
Tchaikovsky, Excerpts from “Nutcracker Suite”
Dvorák, Symphony No.9 in E minor, op.95 “From the New World” (and Rehearsal)
In 1892 Antonin Dvorák accepted the invitation of a wealthy Mrs. Thurber to become the director of her National Conservatory of Music in New York. During the time he spent in America, he composed, among other works, the Symphony No. 9 (originally published as No. 5) “From the New World”. Dvorak was fascinated by Negro spirituals and the songs and dances of American Indians. In an interview, he claimed: “In the Negro melodies of America, I discovered all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.” Though the pentatonic and modal scales he used in the Ninth Symphony can also be found in folk music of many countries, including his native Bohemia, the melodies of the Ninth have become indelibly associated with America. Particularly “American” in flavor are the flute melody of the first movement, which recalls the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, and the theme of the slow movement. The symphony was recorded during a concert given by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Karl Böhm at Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal in the late 1970s.
Delibes, Excerpts from “Coppélia”
Festive Gala at the Semperoper Dresden: Beethoven Symphony No. 9
“Everyone loves Beethoven’s ‘Ninth’,” says Christian Thielemann. Performing it with the Sächsische Staatskapelle was “one of the most beautiful things that has happened to me in my life”. For many it is the soundtrack for New Year’s Eve ever since Arthur Nikisch conducted this landmark in symphonic history over the turn of the year 1918/19 and established a tradition that has spread worldwide. New Year’s Eve was also the occasion for this concert performed in the festively lit Semperoper. Camilla Nylund, Christa Mayer, Klaus Florian Vogt and Georg Zeppenfeld form the vocal quartet of this performance, Christian Thielemann conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden. “Thielemann led the orchestra with composure […], made the music […] a sound speech, celebrated the melody in the slow movement. [The finale] culminated in a veritable thundering of joy.“ (Sächsiche Zeitung)
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.