Tomáš Netopil

Performance of Janacek's opera performed/streamed live in Vienna on April 27th, 2017.

From the Rai ‘Arturo Toscanini’ Auditorium comes the debut concert of Franco-German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt with the Rai Orchestra, performing the Jewish rhapsody for cello and orchestra *Schelomo*, one of Ernest Bloch’s best-known works. Tomáš Netopil takes to the podium and, to open the programme, presents the Rai premiere in Turin of the Overture from the third act of the opera Bouře (The Tempest), written in 1895 by the composer Zdeněk Fibich and based on Shakespeare’s play. The evening concludes with Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88, composed in 1889 in Prague and known as the ‘English’ Symphony.

In this live recording for 2009, Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila - a story of doomed love set against the backdrop of cultural conflict between Hebrews and Philistines - is reinterpreted to relate with the conflicts in today's Middle East. "In our approach to this opera we tried to move away fromthe quasi-biblical interpretation, and to place the story in a contemporary context to explain its political meaning in today's world," say the two directors, Israeli Omri Nitzan and Palestinian Amir Nizar Zuabi. In this production by Vlaamse Opera, the dramatic story of Saint-Saëns' greatest opera is unfolded in all its tragic beauty.