Salzburg Festival 2017: Mozart, Requiem in D minor, K. 626

A Mozart opera at La Scala in Milan.

Staatsoper Berlin’s new production of Rameau’s tragédie lyrique, directed by Alletta Collins; featuring costumes, sets and lighting designed by Ólafur Eliasson; and musical direction by Simon Rattle, who makes his debut with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.

For years, *The Magic Flute* has been one of the most frequently performed operas at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. After an eight-year absence, Mozart’s work is now back on the programme. Clément Cogitore interprets the plot as a modern coming-of-age story: Tamino and Pamina leave the world of childhood behind and enter a reality in which beauty is fragile and truth is uncertain.

Alone in a secluded mansion, Giacomo Casanova cries out then collapses. When the mysterious and beautiful writer, Elisa von der Recke, comes to visit, it breathes new life into the old man. A movie that captures the myth of the greatest seducer of all times, Casanova, his story is told both through fiction and on-stage opera performances that unravel the tale of his adventures, his passions, and ultimately his fear of death.

Christian Thielemann conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden in this performance of Wagner's opera recorded live in 2013. The performance was held for the Salzburg Easter Festival and featured vocalists including Johan Botha, Michaela Schuster, Stephen Milling and Wolfgang Koch.

A magical opera, a Singspiel, a comedy with spectacular stage effects, a Masonic ritual intertwined with Egyptian mysteries, a heroic-comic opera? "The Magic Flute" has been heard, performed, discussed, scrutinised and questioned more often than almost any other work in the history of opera. But this time, they’ve really outdone themselves... .

Philippe Jaroussky as Ruggiero is in thrall to Patricia Petibon as the sorceress Alcina in Katie Mitchell’s virtuosic production of Handel’s opera from the 2015 Aix-en-Provence Festival, described by Bachtrack as “a night of a thousand delights”. Conducted by Andrea Marcon, this was, in the words of Opera News, “musically … a performance of the highest festival level”. The production of Alcina, by the British director Katie Mitchell, was welcomed by the Financial Times as “meticulously executed …, rich in detail, consummately polished”. As the New York Times wrote: “It involves a huge sorcery machine for turning people into animals (or whatever). And Ms. Mitchell works magic of her own onstage, constantly showing the enchantresses Alcina and Morgana alternating between glamorous public personas and their ‘real life’, older, private selves …There are also bits of simulated sex, mingling genders and suggesting, among other things, inventive new ways to hit high notes.”

Rufus Wainwright has composed a requiem in memory of those lost to the Covid-19 pandemic. This ode to life uses the full power of the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra and features actress Meryl Streep.

A spectacular chase between the prince and the monster opens the scene, featuring a love story with a kidnapped princess, two warring antagonists—the Queen of the Night and Sarastro—, "funny characters" like Papageno and Papagena, and, last but not least, the magical instruments of flute and glockenspiel... The enchanting music and fairytale motifs make "The Magic Flute" the perfect introduction to the world of opera for young and old.

Prince Tamino promises the Queen of the Night that he will rescue her daughter Pamina from the enchanter Sarastro. He begins his quest, accompanied by the bird-catcher Papageno – but all is not as it seems… Tamino and Papageno discover Sarastro is a wise and kind leader. They undergo three ordeals. By the end they are united with their true loves: Tamino with Pamina, and Papageno with his Papagena.

Suspecting her missing husband is being held as a political prisoner, a noblewoman disguises herself as a male prison guard. She discovers him weakened in the darkest dungeon, but will she be able to rescue him before it is too late?

An all-star cast featuring Deutsche Grammophon artist Anna Netrebko, Bryn Terfel and Anna Prohaska, delivers a sensational new recording of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, conducted by Daniel Barenboim at the start of his inaugural season as Music Director of La Scala. Recorded live at the opening of the 2011-12 La Scala season, Don Giovanni is now set to be released in time for Bryn Terfel’s 50th birthday on 9 November 2015. It also ties in with the traditional opening of the new season at La Scala – 7 December, the feast-day of St Ambrose, patron saint of Milan.

Picture a day like this recounts the story of a woman bereft at the loss of her baby, who is told that she has a chance to restore her infant to life: "Find one happy person in this world and cut one button from their sleeve. Do it before night and your child will live." After a series of initially promising encounters end in disappointment, can she pull off the miracle she needs? Find out in this fable about human nature, a tale of self-discovery where the flow of music—performed by the excellent Mahler Chamber Orchestra, marking their 25th anniversary—follows the flow of life.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s *St John Passion*, performed in Leipzig by the young boys of the St Thomas Church Choir, which the composer conducted for twenty-seven years.

Salome, princess of Judea, the daughter‑in‑law of King Herod, finds life in her father‑in‑law’s palace dreary. Her curiosity is roused when she hears the voice of Jochanaan, a prophet held prisoner by Herod who is afraid of him. Obsessed by this enigmatic and virtuous man, Salome is ready to do anything to possess him, dead or alive. Drawing on Oscar Wilde’s scandalous play of the same name, in 1905 Richard Strauss produced the work that was to ensure his status as Wagner’s successor in the history of German opera. A dazzling hour and forty minutes, decadent in its very essence, which, for her debut at the Paris Opera, Lydia Steier treats as a dystopia in which amorality rules.

Guiseppe Verdi’s Requiem is still heard mainly in theatre and concert halls. However, the author himself intended this composition to be performed in church, and on special occasions. Conducted by Teodor Currentzis and performed by soloists and musicAeterna choir and orchestra, Verdi’s famous funeral mass returns from the concert stage to Milan’s Church of San Marco, the same place where it was premiered in 1874. The seven parts of the Requiem become steps on the way to comprehending the sacrament of death, the operatic character of orchestral and vocal writing acquires the strictness of the Catholic tradition, and musical images of rage, despair, and rebellion against the inevitable end are crowned with appeasement.

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 an accumulation of miseries and torments of a wretched existence? Woyzeck is perhaps not so much a bleak account of how miserable life can be as how much strength is required to deal with the daily vicissitudes of life and how delicate and fragile a balance the human psyche rests on.

In a village community that holds firm to archaic customs, the young hunter Max must pass a marksmanship test so he may marry his sweetheart, Agathe. Of all times now when his shooting has been very much below par! Carl Maria von Weber and his librettist Friedrich Kind fluctuate between ghost story, fairy tale, fortune play and interplay between heaven and hell.

In the spring of 2024, the Berliner Philharmoniker, under the direction of their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko, presented a staged production of Richard Strauss’s thrilling and dark opera Elektra – the highlight of the Baden-Baden Easter Festival. The title role was sung by the acclaimed soprano Nina Stemme. Philipp Stölzl, who has caused a sensation with his spectacular productions on the lake stage at the Bregenz Festival, was the director and set designer.

The Galilean Princess Salome is one of the mythical female figures in Western cultural history. Her erotic dance in front of her stepfather Herod is already mentioned in the gospels of the Bible, for whom she has the severed head of John the Baptist brought on a bowl in return.

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 Adalgisa. Caught between love and vengeance, faith and reason, tradition and empire, Norma nearly kills her children—before choosing another, equally radical path. Vincenzo Bellini’s 1831 opera is a masterpiece of Italian Romanticism. The role of Norma, with its emotional and vocal range from bel canto to raw outcry, is iconic. Director Vasily Barkhatov sets the tragedy amid political upheaval, where old idols are replaced by new. Star soprano Asmik Grigorian debuts in the title role. Adalgisa is sung by Aigul Akhmetshina.

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 powerful Shakespearean opera, with baritone Vladislav Sulimsky and soprano Asmik Grigorian in the roles of the murderous spouses.

Mozart did not write the Requiem as despairing funeral music for his impending death. Rather, the piece proclaims eternal light and redemption. Together with a first-class quartet of soloists, the choirs of the Bavarian and Swedish radios and the distinguished musicians of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Claudio Abbado uncovers this more hopeful and forgiving essence of the Requiem.