Johann Strau's Die Fledermaus (The Bat) has been part of the Bayerische Staatsoper's repertoire since 1895 and has always been performed there by star-studded casts. In December 2023, the curtain rose on a spectacular new production of this piece. Director Barrie Kosky gave the "operetta of all operettas" a new look: a society, an entire city dances towards the abyss in a colourful, lavish set (stage design: Rebecca Ringst, costumes: Klaus Bruns). The setting is Vienna, the city of the golden operetta era, where Die Fledermaus premiered in 1874. A volcano boils beneath the glamour of feather boas and tutus. Not only for Gabriel von Eisenstein, the bat's revenge becomes a nightmare when, during a glittering masked ball at the residence of Prince Orlofsky, a fake marquis and a fake chevalier, an alleged Hungarian countess and plenty of budding artists meet for a raucous party. Glasses are clinking, relationships are shaken, there are lies, there is love, and dancing (choreography: Otto Pichler). The people celebrate while they still can, true to the motto: "Happy is the one who forgets". General Music Director Vladimir Jurowski - in his third new Munich production together with Barrie Kosky - brings new aspects of the score to the fore. Diana Damrau makes her role debut as Rosalinde, Georg Nigl interprets her husband Gabriel von Eisenstein, Katharina Konradi appears as Adele and Martin Winkler as Frank; other roles feature Markus Bruck (Dr. Falke), Sean Panikkar (Alfred), Kevin Conners (Dr. Blind) and Miriam Neumaier (Ida). The actor Franz Josef Strohmeier and the tap dancer Max Pollak, among others, play the six-fold frog.

Pianist Yuja Wang has become an integral part of the world's major stages, inspiring young and old alike. Her playing displays technical brilliance and a seemingly endless range of emotions. The Piano Recital from the Wiener Konzerthaus allows her to display her fiery virtuosity as well as her mature musicality and imagination with an eclectic, personally chosen program. It combines masterpieces from famous works by Ludwig van Beethoven and Alexander Scriabin to lesser-known compositions by Gyorgy Ligeti and Nikolai Kapustin, including also sublime musical miniatures by Christoph Willibald Gluck and Philip Glass. A historical milestone that is not to be missed! "The hall went wild!" (Der Standard)

Video artist Franc Aleu, who belongs to the artists' group La Fura dels Baus, sets the exciting Puccini opera Turandot into the future. With projection mapping and 3D technology in the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the play about the cruel princess is shown in a spectacular, visually striking new way. The great vocal cast including Irene Theorin, "a powerful-voiced Turandot, Jorge de Leon, a sovereign Calaf and Soprano Ermonela Jaho, who sings a touching Liu“ (Das Opernmagazin) is leaded by conductor Josep Pons "in great form“ (forumopera.com).

Julia Bullock, Joyce DiDonato and Jakub Józef Orlinski star in Katie Mitchell’s thrilling new production of Handel’s Theodora in an alternative modern-day reality, Theodora, a religious fundamentalist, plots for the resistance against the Roman occupation. But when her secret plan to destroy the Roman embassy is discovered, she learns the true brutality of her oppressors. Not heard in Covent Garden since the 18th Century and sung in the original English libretto by Thomas Morell, Theodora is a tour de force for soloists and chorus alike, with ensembles, duets and arias of profound depth and beauty. This new interpretation, conducted by Baroque specialist Harry Bicket, shines a new, feminist light on the story.

Doktor Faust was left incomplete at the time of Busoni’s death. Intended as his masterpiece, the opera’s genesis was complex and long. Based on Goethe’s tragic play, the story of Faust’s pact with the devil is well known but the opera’s structure represents Busoni’s unique conception, cast in two Prologues, a beautiful orchestral Intermezzo and three scenes. Exploring ideas of rationality and metaphysical doubt as well as the concepts of artifice and pretence inherent in operatic performance, the result is one of the most creative and unsettling of Busoni’s works.

Also available on Blu-ray

The French program offers a stimulating blend of celebrated repertoire works as well as “special tips” from the Romantic era to the early 20th century. These concerts of Leonard Bernstein were unanimously hailed in the press, both for the dynamism and brio of a conductor at the peak of his artistic powers, and for the unmistakable signs of rejuvenation of the Orchestre National de France. Featuring works of Hector Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, subtitled Episode in the Life of an Artist, Albert Roussel‘s Symphony No. 3 – Leonard Bernstein is, in a sense, paying homage to his friend and benefactor Serge Koussevitzky, who commissioned the work for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930 - Ambroise Thomas´ sparkling, Rossini-like overture to Raymond and Camille Saint-Saens’ Le Rouet d’Omphale it was “… one of the most wonderful Berlioz concerts that you can dream of …” (Le Monde)

Also available on Blu-ray

In 2018, Yo-Yo Ma began a two-year journey, setting out to perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s six suites for solo cello in one sitting, across 36 locations on 6 continents. For Yo-Yo, Bach’s 300-hundred-year-old music is one extraordinary example of how culture connects us and can help us to imagine and build a better future. In an unforgettable experience the 19 times Grammy ® Award winner and internationally acclaimed cellist performed the Cello Suites at the overwhelming Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens. Yo-Yo Ma says: “These suites are so meaningful. They’re not only companions and friends, but they’ve also been reference points in my life.” “Soft sounds around me suggested that others were caught up in similarly strong emotions. How Ma has this effect on people is a mystery: I suspect it has to do with the warmth he brings to music that is fundamentally beyond comprehension. He makes the godlike human.” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker)


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REVIEWS:

He doesn’t ‘ham-up’ his Bach, but there is more spontaneity here than I’ve heard from Ma before in his studio recordings, and playfulness and profundity alike are communicated with more directness and a feel of risk which is quite bracing. Every recording is a captured moment in time, and this is a unique document of a consummate artist performing the greatest of music composed for his instrument. If you are a fan of Yo-Yo Ma and/or of Bach’s Six Suites then you will want this.

– MusicWeb International

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma brings a lifetime of experience and sensitivity to the works, maintaining their intimacy even within this vast arena, and not a note is out of place. If you don’t know the suites well just listen to the third which is so full of life and joy. A recording to treasure.

– Lark Reviews (Dr. Brian Hick

Also available on Blu-ray

On the occasion of the 200th birthday of Giuseppe Verdi, Teatro Regio di Parma and Unitel Classica have joined forces to create a truly unique project – for the first time ever, and just in time for the composer’s 200th brithday, Verdi’s Operatic oeuvre, which comprises the labour of more than 50 years, will be available in High Definition and Surround Sound. All of the composer’s 26 Operas, as well as the Requiem – which is closely related to the Operas – will be performed and audio-visually recorded in and around Parma, and released on DVD and Blu-ray. Verdi’s Nabucco is presented here staged by Daniele Abbado. Bonus features include a 10 minute introduction of the opera.

"As last year, the musical direction was entrusted to Michele Mariotti, whose immersion in the score has deepened further allowing him to provide a very remarkable reading. Simply seeing the warmth that all the singers offered him from the stage was enough realize that this young maestro has managed to develop genuine team work producing very good results. His interpretation of “Va pensiero” was unique: a very personal reading, slow, solemn and moving from which the Teatro Regio Chorus rewarded him with spectacular and truly unusual performance. I had never heard a chorus singing this passage at such a pianissimo complete with real diminuendos. This only can be done by an exceptional choir... Similarly, the music from of the Teatro Regio Orchestra was everything to be expected from this excellent group. The protagonist Nabucco was Leo Nucci, the Verdi Festival’s true star... Abigaille was the Greek soprano Dimitra Theodossiou... The cheers she received were not even true cheers, but spectacular screams, so loud that it seemed as if her life might be at risk. At her final bow she was almost completely covered by flowers, thrown from the upper floors, with none left at all for any other artist... As might be expected there was a completely full house for this almost gala performance. 'Va pensiero' was encored at popular request and at the final bows, there were triumphs for Leo Nucci, Dimitra Theodossiou and Michele Mariotti." -- José M. Irurzun, MusicWeb International reviewing a live performance of this production

Nabucco – Leo Nucci
Ismaele – Bruno Ribeiro
Zaccaria – Riccardo Zanellato
Abigaille – Dimitra Theodossiou
Fenena – Annamaria Chiuri
Il Gran Sacerdote di Belo – Alessandro Spina
Abdallo – Mauro Buffoli
Anna – Cristina Giannelli

Teatro Regio di Parma Chorus and Orchestra
(chorus master: Martino Faggiani)
Michele Mariotti, conductor

Daniele Abbado, staging
Caroline Lang, stage director
Luigi Perego, set and costume designer
Valero Alfier, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Teatro Regio di Parma, 2009

Bonus:
- Introduction to Nabucco

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Running time: 137 mins (opera) + 10 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1

Winner of the 2021 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition!

“A vivid Orlando makes history in Vienna” (New York Times International): Olga Neuwirth’s opera Orlando, based on Virginia Woolf’s novel of the same name, is the first full-length opera by a woman celebrating its premiere at the Vienna State Opera. Olga Neuwirth, for a long time one of the great composers of the present, succeeds with this opera in creating a captivating arc across many musical genres. It’s an exciting, socially critical production by Polly Graham who puts a fantastically singing and playing Kate Lindsey in the center of the action. For Orlando, Neuwirth won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award; it became “world premiere of the year” by Opernwelt magazine, and for Die Zeit, the Hamburg-based national German newspaper, it was “the premiere of the season.”

Acclaim:

"Neuwirth’s score, fusing orchestral, electronic and sampled sounds, is often bewitching...while the use of musical quotations, from Elizabethan polyphony to Lady Gaga, is certainly entertaining.

"The Vienna production...clearly didn’t stint on anything. Some of the sense of grandeur may be lost on a small screen, but the use of video, with texts projected on to the set, as well as the sumptuous costumes by Comme des Garçons, is certainly lavish...

"As Orlando, the mezzo Kate Lindsey is outstanding in what is a hugely demanding role...Constance Hauman provides a telling cameo as the Queen. Matthias Pintscher is the conductor, efficiently coordinating everything[.]"

--The Guardian (Andrew Clements)

Together with photographer Mat Hennek, French star pianist Hélène Grimaud devises a multimedia concert project at the Grand Hall of Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. Grimaud’s virtuosic piano performance is accompanied by Hennek’s highly praised photo series “Woodlands”, which depicts genuine portraits of trees, Grimaud’s piano recital includes works by Romantic and impressionistic composers. They are connected by seven “Transitions”, written exclusively for Grimaud by British composer and DJ Nitin Sawhney. The motives of Hennek’s Woodlands series create an extraordinary visual backdrop, which in combination with Grimaud´s pianistic “impeccable clarity and articulation” (Hamburger Abendblatt) and the Elbphilharmonie’s splendid acoustics grants a concert experience of a special kind.

REVIEW:

Grimaud is a pianist ideally suited for the repertoire included in this program. She possesses a prodigious technique, the ability to evoke a broad palette of instrumental colors, and a patrician sense of phrasing. Grimaud can also summon a prodigiously focused and powerful sonority in the grand climaxes. The artistic level of this collaborative recital is of a very high order. Both the video and audio quality of the Blu-ray/DVD are superb.

– Fanfare

Winner of a 2022 Gramophone Award!

The Snow Queen is Hans Abrahamsen’s first opera, composed to a self-penned libretto, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s eponymous fairy tale. Following an in-depth study of the topic of snow and a life-long obsession with Andersen’s fairy tales, Abrahamsen composed the opera between 2014 and 2018. Hans Abrahamsen’s music, with its smooth transitions and subtly modified repeats, lends the lyrics both depth and lightness. He is keen to point out the range of avenues for interpretation available. ” It’s possible to read the fairy tale in a variety of ways. It contains many mysteries which are open to numerous interpretations.” Accompanying Barbara Hannigan is a top-class ensemble of singers, including Peter Rose, Katarinya Dalayman and Rachael Wilson. Cornelius Meister is the musical director, currently general music director at the Staatsoper Stuttgart. Director Andreas Kriegenburg’s production of The Snow Queen is a touching story by adults, for an adult audience, offering a journey into the innermost regions of the human soul. Recorded during the premiere run in the presence of the composer and in close collaboration with him, this release captures an important work of new musical theatre.

On 7 April 1923, Ciboulette premiered at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris, and, as one of Reynaldo Hahn’s most elegant and refined works, it is considered one of the last masterpieces of French operetta. The story tells of the pretty market gardener Ciboulette who, after an encounter with a fortune teller, decides to throw herself into a hedonistic future. She comes across a whole collection of Parisian characters, but true love eventually triumphs as the prophecy is fulfilled. Although Hahn wrote other works in this genre none of them would match Ciboulette’s success. This Opéra Comique production has been acclaimed by BBC Music Magazine for a cast that was ‘impeccable.'

REVIEW:

It’s possible that this nonsense might be performed more plausibly if the production and direction were toned down, but director Michael Fau’s version is certainly credible. The cast is excellent in pulling off this farce. Julie Fuchs has a lovely voice that is put to good use, and her comedic performance is excellent. Julian Behr’s Antonim is quite the simpleton with a beautiful voice. Everyone else sings the songs nicely and acts their parts in the cartoonish way required. The set design is very effective, with drops and outlined stage scenery that adds to the cartoon characters. The costume designs are certainly amusing with weird hoop dresses for the women in the Spanish cabaret sequence that have to be seen to be believed. The chorus and orchestra are also very good—as are the 16 x 9 widescreen picture and DTS 5.1 sound. There are subtitles in 5 languages including English. The booklet has cast pictures and commentary in French and English. Sit back and enjoy the music and the silliness.

-- American Record Guide

Giuseppe Verdi was well on the way towards renown and prosperity when he took up the story of Violetta, a famed courtesan whose intensely romantic and colorful but tragically brief life marked the emergence of realism into Italian opera. Verdi and Alexandre Dumas intended this melodrama to have a contemporary setting, and David Livermore’s stunning production maintains this wish by placing his elegant and powerful cast firmly into the 20th century. This alchemy of masterful acting, vivid bel canto voices and the vitality of Zubin Mehta’s conducting results in a triumphant and unforgettably poignant operatic experience.

An opéra-comique by an Italian composer? This was a rarity in its day, but after the “barely averted disaster” of its opening night, Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment became a popular success, not least for the high Cs demanded from Tonio in the famous tenor aria "Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!" The story revolves around Marie, the canteen girl of the Regiment, whose lover Tonio joins the army to be near her just as she is claimed for marriage into nobility. This acclaimed Teatro Donizetti production was considered by turns “hilarious… tender and moving… [and] overwhelmingly brilliant.” (Bachtrack)

Alessandro Scarlatti is one of the key figures of Italian Baroque opera and the influential Neapolitan school in particular. Griselda is the last of Scarlatti’s operas to have survived intact to the present day. Its narrative is set in motion by the marriage of the King of Sicily to a poor shepherdess; the ensuing complications of love and the tensions between country and court delivering an entertainment full of lyrical charm and lively action. Performed by a superb team of Baroque specialists and acclaimed singers, this production is set in Puglia’s magnificent Palazzo Ducale and celebrates the 300th anniversary of Griselda’s premiere.