Dorothea Roeschmann, Anna Larsson, Johan Botha – and rising star Anna Prohaska: master conductor Pierre Boulez the “grand seigneur de subtle minimalism and exquisitely beguiling sounds” (Der Standard), assembled a cast of tremendous distinction for this prestigious concert, conceived as a tribute to Gustav Mahler. After two works by Mahler´s pupil Alban Berg, featuring Roeschmann and Prohaska, the main event of the concert is Gustav Mahler´s large-scale cantata “Das klagende Lied” – a “great spectral opera for the mind´s eye (Wiener Zeitung)
Falstaff
“Everything in this world is a joke,” says Falstaff, and these words are truly given weight by Ambrogio Maestri, one of the finest Falstaffs of our time. The Italian baritone brings a powerful, versatile voice to his role, but also brings to his character a hilarious buffo quality. Daniele Gatti, one of the most acclaimed opera conductors working today, leads a stunning cast of singers, including Barbara Frittoli as Alice Ford. Genuinely warm italianità in all of the music-making, combined with a boisterous production by stage director Sven-Eric Bechtolf, turns Verdi’s commedia lirica into a fireworks display of high spirits as well as what the Neue Zürcher Zeitung called “musically and dramaturgically a feast of life and of love of life”.