Also available on Blu-ray World Premiere recording on Video! Church corruption, human violence and a daughter who plots revenge on her abusive father – Goldschmidt’s...

Also available on Blu-ray

World Premiere recording on Video! Church corruption, human violence and a daughter who plots revenge on her abusive father – Goldschmidt’s Beatrice Cenci has every ingredient for a gripping opera. At Bregenz, Johannes Erath brought Beatrice Cenci on stage for the first time. Although written 70 years ago, “one musically quickly associates Puccini or other Romantics“ (Neue Zurcher Zeitung), underlined by Goldschmidt´s own words, saying it became a real “Belcanto-Opera”. “Johannes Debus conducts the Wiener Symphoniker with true feeling for the score“. ”In the title role, Gal James is moving“ and ”the baritone Christoph Pohl has all the vocal charisma.” (The Telegraph). A “brilliantly focused staging of a neglected work“ (The Telegraph), a “great, wonderful evening“ (Deutschlandfunk Kultur).

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REVIEW:

Goldschmidt set out to write a latterday bel canto work, and his vocal lines are certainly always singable, over orchestral writing that references Mahler, Busoni and Schreker as well as standard 19th-century operatic models. The Bregenz cast, led by Gal James as Beatrice, with Dshamilja Kaiser as her stepmother Lucrezia and Christoph Pohl as the swaggering, monstrous Francisco Cenci, complete with diamante codpiece, is a very decent one, and Johannes Debus makes sure that Goldschmidt’s whirling, churning orchestral writing gets the attention it deserves.

– Guardian