Featuring the best teenage performers from across the USA, Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYO Jazz) performs a collection of jazz standards as well as contemporary works exploring jazz’s influence on hip-hop, R&B and pop music in this unmissable performance. The group plays under the direction of trumpetist Sean Jones and is joined by Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Dee Dee Bridgewater. “Astonishing – not just technically, but stylistically” (The Telegraph) “You could be pretty confident you were hearing some stars of tomorrow.” (The Times)
Arena di Verona Festival 2023: Tosca
It is an event that attracts thousands of music lovers to Verona every summer: the opera season in the ancient Roman Arena. Nearly 22,000 spectators regularly fill the mphitheater for the performances. The dream couple of opera, Sonya Yoncheva and Vittorio Grigòlo, returns to the breathtaking open-air stage, to perform Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca. Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva is “one of the best Toscas currently singing” and Vittorio Grigòlo “the most Italian Cavaradossi we know. With lots of wonderful melting, elegant and nonchalant full of triumphant greatness a triumph all along the line” (Online Merker). The captivating staging by Argentine director Hugo de Ana, who masterfully exploits the amphitheatre’s vast space by placing huge elements on the stage that are reminiscent of or borrowed from the locations of the action, makes the opera a “spectacle of monumental opulence” (Online Merker). “A Tosca to relish!” Artesnews.it
Le Corsaire
The version of Le Corsaire by Manuel Legris arrives at La Scala, his first revival of a nineteenth century classic, fully highlighting the intent and innovativeness of his choreographic approach and his musical and dramaturgic quest. With its clear and accessible plot, notable attention to musicality and relations among characters, the sumptuous and evocative décor and costumes by Luisa Spinatelli, it will be an occasion recombining the energy virtuosity, the lyricism and romanticism of one of the 19th century’s most adventurous and thrilling ballets d’action with the talents of the La Scala dancers.
The Baltic Festive Concert – Kristine Opolais & Friends
Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais is the evening’s star soloist and will perform highlights from her secular and sacred repertoire. Under the baton of Constantine Orbelian, we experience a concert in the magnificent Basilica of Kaunas. Stars from Latvia, Armenia and the USA perform popular highlights from opera, ballet and orchestral song.
Bryn Terfel – Celtic Beethoven
In this concert from the Festival Saint Denis, bass-baritone Bryn Terfel joins forces with gaïta-player and flautist Carlos Núñez and the Orchestre National de Bretagne under Grant Llewellyn for a special exploration of Beethoven’s arrangements of Scottish, Irish and Welsh folk songs. The composer made his arrangements of the folk songs for voice and piano trio, dressing them up for 19th-century salon, but here – in new arrangements by Benoît Menut and Pierre Chépélov – they come full circle to be reconnected with their Celtic origins.
Tugan Sokhiev conducts Das Lied von der Erde
Mahler composed his “Lied von der Erde” in a phase of loneliness, but still: the seven Chinese poems that he set into very personal symphonic songs also spread a message of consolation. The Münchner Philharmoniker, one of the world’s leading Mahler orchestras, Tugan Sokhiev, Ekaterina Gubanova and Andreas Schager deliver a gripping performance.
The Weimar Recital – Franz Schubert: Songs & Ballads
Konstantin Krimmel, the rising star of song interpreters and the renowned pianist Daniel Heide perform Franz Schubert’s settings of ballads and poems from the German classics. It was filmed in the “Book Cube” of the venerable Anna Amalia Library in the heart of Weimar. Wonderful pictures of the city of classics complement the impressive setting.
A Swan Lake
After his acclaimed literary adaptations of »Carmen« and »Peer Gynt«, The Swedish choreographer Johan Inger now turns towards a story that has become a ballet classic in the performance canon and that represents another facet of the choreographer: “A Swan Lake”. The new production of the Semperoper Ballett asks profound questions such as: What influence do violence and manipulation have on interpersonal relationships? What role do personal freedom, respect and acceptance play in a romantic relationship?
Romeo et Juliette
For this new production of Gounod’s operatic masterpiece at Opernhaus Zürich, stage director Ted Huffmann creates a stark and light-filled scenery in which Benjamin Bernheim and Julie Fuchs’s enchanting voices and their enigmatic play can shine. “The couple of all couples – you can lose yourself in this music for the soul.” (NZZ)
St. John Passion
In 2024, J. S. Bach’s “St John Passion” celebrates 300 years since its creation. To celebrate this milestone, the Thomanerchor and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Thomaskantor Andreas Reize present the masterpiece at St. Thomas Church Leipzig in its original version, together with a star cast of soloists and Julian Prégardien as the evangelist.