Víkingur Olafsson and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra Perform Ravel and Grieg @ Musikfest Bremen Festival 2022

Ariadne Auf Naxos

A rich man invites to a banquet at which - at his wish - a new opera, Ariadne auf Naxos, is to be performed simultaneously with the improvised play The Faithless Zerbinetta and Her Four Lovers.

Fidelio

Don Florestan is a personal enemy of the governor Don Pizarro and also a confidant of the minister Don Fernando. As Pizarro sees Florestan as a threat, he wants to eliminate him. He cannot bring himself to commit open murder, so he has him secretly imprisoned and hopes that he will soon die of his own accord. Florestan's wife Leonore suspects that Pizarro is behind her husband's disappearance. Disguised as a man, she sets off in search of Florestan and, under the name "Fidelio", takes up service as an assistant to the jailer Rocco - she suspects Florestan is in the prison he administers and hopes to free him.

The Decent One

Through previously undiscovered private letters, photos and diaries that were found in the Himmler family house in 1945, the "The Decent One" exposes a unique and at times uncomfortable access to the life and mind of the merciless "Architect of the Final Solution" Heinrich Himmler.

Die Zauberflöte

Live performance from the Salzburg Festival, 6 August 2012.

Doktor Faust

Faust - a lonely scholar, despairing of life, who has so far failed to discover its highest meaning - is given a book on black magic from three mysterious students from Cracow. When Mephistopheles appears and proposes a pact with Faust, the two of them set off together on a (dream) journey. Doktor Faust remained a fragment at the time of the composer's death. Busoni died in 1924, unable to complete what he himself described as his "state masterpiece" - an opera to which he had a deep personal attachment. The missing scenes from the score were completed by his pupil, Philipp Jarnach, whom Busoni had become acquainted with during his period in exile in Zurich. In this form the opera was given its first performance in Dresden in 1925. Then in the 1980s the conductor Anthony Beaumont came across previously undiscovered sketches by Busoni and produced a new version of Doktor Faust. The current recording uses the Jarnach score.

Der Freischütz

Verdi: Aida (Bregenz Festival)

A spectacular production of Aida filmed at Bregenz Festival's lakeside stage in 2009, with Carlo Rizzi conducting the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra and the Polish Radio Choir.

Orphée et Eurydice

Live from Munich, October 2003. A husband laments the death of his wife. He follows her to the underworld and finds her there. But he is forbidden to look at her. He does it anyway! Has he now lost her forever? Or will the gods' hearts be moved by this loving, "human" glance? In 1762, Gluck put the quietus on the artificiality of baroque opera with this work - from then on the human element took center stage.

Falstaff (Zurich)

Features a great cast: Ambrogio Maestri is one of the finest Falstaffs of our time. The Italian baritone brings a powerful, versatile voice to his role, but also brings 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 Fritolli as Alice Ford. Genuinely warm italianita in all of the music-making, combined with a boisterous production by stage director Sven-Eric Bechtolf, turns Verdis 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.

Picassos Friseur

In 1948 Pablo Picasso met the hairdresser Eugenio Arias. Both were linked by the fate of emigration. If Picasso initially only had his hair cut by Arias, a deep friendship soon developed.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Magnificat @ Bremen Music Festival

Under the baton of its artistic director, Shunsuke Sato, the Netherlands Bach Society performs Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s “Magnificat” at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Bremen.

Le Nozze di Figaro

Leos Janácek - Kát'a Kabanová

Janáček's three-act opera Katya Kabanova, staged by Barrie Kosky and staged at the Felsenreitschule by Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša with an international cast of soloists, was performed on August 7 at the 2022 Salzburg Festival. The opera is based on the play The Storm by Aleksandr Ostrovsky. Set in a small Russian town, the story revolves around Káta, who is trapped in a loveless marriage to an abusive man named Boris. When she meets and falls in love with a young man named Vána Kudrjáš, she finally experiences happiness and passion. But their relationship is short-lived, as Boris finds out and forces Káta to confess her infidelity in front of the entire town. The opera explores themes of social conformity, oppression, and the consequences of forbidden love. Stage director Barrie Kosky creates an intimate but impressive setting in the magnificent Felsenreitschule.

Claudio Monteverdi: il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria

After ten years battling in the Trojan War—and another ten on an epic journey homeward—Ulysses returns to his homeland. Disguised as a beggar, the king of Ithaca must recover his wife, his son, and his people... Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Venice, 1640), directed here by Klaus-Michael Grüber and conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, achieves a perfect dramatic balance, stirring the imagination and instantly transporting the viewer to a long-ago time. The all-star cast features one of the earliest recorded appearances by the great Jonas Kaufmann, who makes his presence felt as Ulisse's son Telemaco.

Fly, Thought, on Golden Wings

World-famous baritone Thomas Hampson hosts this tribute to Italy's best known and most beloved composer, Giuseppe Verdi. Tracing the life of one of opera's greatest luminaries, this documentary, shot on location in Italy and France, invites you to visit the hometown of the composer and takes you on a journey to the cities -- including Paris -- that Verdi visited during his musical career. The video also includes four Verdi arias sung by Hampson.

La Finta Giardiniera

The Zurich Opera gathered a superb cast for this production: Italian soprano Eva Mei sings the Countess Violante, known as Sandrina, the feigned gardener of the title. Spanish soprano Isabel Rey is her opponent Arminda, and Arminda's former lover, the melancholy Cavaliere Ramiro, is sung by Romanian mezzo Liliana Nikiteanu. Moretti's staging presents the action in a modern villa in a hierarchical world of the rich and famous.