Fuoco Sacro - A Search for the Sacred Fire of Song
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Opera confronts us with extremes of emotion, sometimes delivering unforgettable, life-changing experiences. Fuoro sacro (‘Sacred Fire’) seeks out singers who have the power to pierce our hearts, presenting three of them at work in the most intimate details of their rehearsals and preparations....
When a beautiful young woman in rural Moravia becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she learns that love is sometimes only skin-deep. Asmik Grigorian as Jenůfa in her Covent Garden debut and Karita Mattila as the Kostelnička lead a star cast with Hungarian conductor Henrik Nánási conducting a...
Celebrate the triumphant return of the famed Salzburg Festival with this extraordinary production of Richard Strauss’s Elektra, live from the spectacular Felsenreitschule! Lithuanian soprano Aušrinė Stundytė makes her grand debut on the mythical festival stage in the title role, accompanied by...
A study of a man's physical and mental limitations. In the 24 quite harsh and grueling fragments of the unfinished drama, a body and a mind are tested as far as they can be pushed before their owner goes over the edge. Is there just one thing that proves to be too much for Franz Woyzeck, or is it...
Based on Oscar Wilde's lurid play, it is an intense exploration of the Salome story. Its sumptuous vocal and orchestral writing seethes and pulsates as Strauss conjures up the brutality of Herod's corrupt court. Richard Strausss opera at the Salzburg Festival, staged by Romeo Castellucci at the...
Giuseppe Verdi: Macbeth - Salzburger Festspiele 2023
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After a victorious battle, three witches predict that Macbeth, who commands King Duncan's army, will ascend the throne of Scotland. Urged on by his wife to force fate, he takes advantage of the monarch's stay in their castle to murder him... The daring Krzysztof Warlikowski revisits Verdi's most...
Director Claus Guth heightens the surrealism of this initially extremely cruel fairy tale, which he prefers to see as a »parable«, into the grotesque. Guth sees Calaf, son of the fugitive Tartar king Timur, »thrown into a world that he cannot understand«. It is a system that functions according...
Norma is a woman torn between two systems. As a chaste druid priestess, she decides on war and peace in an occupied land; secretly, she’s the lover of Roman commander Pollione and mother of his two children. Her double life unravels when Pollione plans to leave her for the younger priestess...
Extraordinary soprano Asmik Grigorian tackles the demanding role of Cio-Cio-San, the loyal geisha at the heart of Puccini’s devastating tragedy. Tenor Jonathan Tetelman stars as the callous American naval officer Pinkerton, whose betrayal destroys her. Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong reprises the...
In 1846, Anthony Hope sails into London with the mysterious Sweeney Todd, a once-naive barber whose life and marriage was uprooted by a corrupt justice system. Todd confides in Nellie Lovett, the owner of a local meat pie shop, and the two become partners, as Todd swears revenge on those that have...
Rusalka, a water spirit, lives with her family in the pure waters of the forest lake. When she falls in love with a Prince, she sacrifices her voice and leaves her home in the hope of finding true love in a new world – a world that does not love her back.
The libretto of the most well known opera by Dvořak, which premiered in Prague in 1901, is inspired by the Czech version of the Central European folktale, one we also know as Undine (1811) by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué or The Little Mermaid (1837) by Hans Christian Andersen.
Cio-Cio-San, the young Japanese bride of American naval officer Lieutenant Pinkerton, finds her romantic idyll shattered when he deserts her shortly after their marriage. She lives in hope that one day he will return.
Originally set in the 15th century, Tchaikovsky's "The Enchantress" is updated to the present day in this innovative production. The charismatic, emancipated Nastasya, who rejects the advances of the devious Mamïrov, duly faces the implacable forces of traditional values in a society riven by...
This is a performance of Wagner's three-act opera Der fliegende Holländer ("The flying Dutchman"), performed by Bayreuther Festpiele, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. The staging was notable for two other milestones, as Oksana Lyniv became the first woman to conduct at Richard Wagner’s legendary...
Narcissus (from Greek Narkissos) shares the root nark-, with narcosis and narcotic. All these words have the same origin in the verb narkaō – to intoxicate through a strong smell. I was particularly interested to find out why a handsome and overall fortunate man says he never feels happy. He...
A general and his stepdaughter are both heavily in debt. When the family's tutor, in love with the girl, gets lucky at the gambling table, he tries to rescue her from her desperate situation, but she outright rejects him. Prokofiev's first full-length opera The Gambler, based on Dostoyevsky's...