Opera Chic

Domenica with Domenico: Il ritorno di Don Calandrino

OC unpacks her luggage from a week in London to a newly-uploaded capture of Domenico Cimarosa's Il Ritorno di Don Calandrino, the 18th century gem unearthed by Riccardo Muti (from the archives of the San Pietro a Maiella Conservatorio), which premiered at the 2007 Salzburger Pfingstfestspiele.

Muti's airy reading of a score that hasn't been heard in over two centuries with his Cherubini kidz is ethereal. Trust. OC was there for an opera that set Salzburg on fire and burned brighter than the (Whit)sun.

Christmas in August: Damiano Michieletto's Bohème in Salzburg

(Above: Anna Netrebko as Mimì and Piotr Beczala as Rodolfo)

Attention Mall Shoppers: Thirty-seven year old Venezian opera director Damiano Michieletto's idea for La Bohème -- opening tomorrow night at the Salzburg Festival with Beczala as Rodolfo, Trebs as Mimì and Machaidze as Musetta -- is Paris as a cross-section framed within Google Maps and dropped into a mall. The young bohemians are mallrats who live in "a glorious age of illusion and utopias, like children, irresponsible. Rodolfo is snappy and irritable and Mimi is fragile." Judging by costumes, it's set in the ~other~ mall where kids clocked each other with masterlocks and stole from Hot Topic, Spenser's and Chess King.

Tomorrow night's la prima will start at 7:00pm on Radio3, streaming live from the Grosses Festspielhaus, featuring interviews with Michieletto and Gatti on the podium with the Wiener Philharmoniker. All photos Silvia Lelli.

(Nino Machaudze as Musetta)

(Anna Netrebko as Mimì)

Ceci Tapped for Salzburger Festspiele

 

While waiting for her new CD to drop, the Italian mezzo Cecilia Bartoli tags Whitsun. 

Pretty in Pink: Netrebko Back in Salzburg

Anna Netrebko visits her beloved Austria this week to sing Juliette (shared with Nino Machaidze) and Piotr Beczala sings Roméo (shared with Stephen Costello) in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, opening on August 10. Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra in Bartlett Sher's staging of Gounod's opera for the Salzburger Festspiele. (photo Reuters). All that bedazzled pink silk & tulle, big curly hair, and low cut necklines make us feel like we're back in middle school. o teh horror!   

Click for half-a-dozen more photos under the cut

Dial N for Nietzsche: Wolfgang Rihm's Dionysos at Salzburger Festspiele

 

The Greek god of wine has been resurrected in German composer Wolfgang Rihm's opera, Dionysos, currently in rotation at this summer's Salzburger Festspiele. It's the story of man's journey towards the Dionysian ideal of hedonism and sensuality, told in Pierre Audi's production -- not necessarily sensual but rather bizarre in stage designer Jonathan Meese's vision full of exaggerated lady parts. light bondage, and bewb groping.

German baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle sang the lead of "N" (for Nietzsche), Hamburg-born soprano Mojca Erdmann was Ariadne (photo above, all AP).  

Click the link below to find a cartoonishly NSFW production still from the production +1.

Non Più Di Fiori: Salzburg Blooms For Muti's "Orfeo ed Euridice"

All eyez on Salzburger Festspiele tonight as Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice" opens: Riccardo Muti at the helm of the production that, coming right after the crazy "Dionysos" by Wolfgang Rihm, is one of the major events of this summer season.

Besides tonight's premiere, the opera will rawk the Grosses Festpielhaus on August 3, 7, 13, 19, 21, 24. On August 15, Muti will flaunt the Wiener in a big Prokofiev concert -- his 200th apparition on the Salzburg stage since his now-famous debut as a young man conducting "Don Pasquale" on Herbie Von K.'s request.

"Orfeo" is directed by Dieter Dorn, sets and costumes by Juergen Rose. The cast: Elisabeth Kulman (Orfeo) Genia Kuehmeier (Euridice), Christiane Karg (Amore). Many more production photos after the jump...

Ivor Bolton (Temporarily) Joins the Blogging Fray

Ivor Bolton's lousy with the Salzburger Festspiele this summer. After opening the festivities on July 25 with Handel's oratorio, Theodora, he's also conducting Haydn's Armida and Stabat Mater -- a grand total just shy of 20 appearances. But as Mozarteumorchester Salzburg’s Chief Conductor, the British born & raised conductor is no stranger to Salzburg. This year, Bolton is the official Blogging Insider for the 2009 Salzburger Festspiele, and has been writing about his experiences every few days.

He'll be conducting the opening of Haydn's Armida tonight, with Christof Loy's direction. Annette Dasch is Armida, Michael Schade is Rinaldo, Mojca Erdmann is Zelmira, and Vito Priante is Idreno.

(Vito Priante as Idreno and Annette Dasch as Armida)

(Michael Schade as Rinaldo and Annette Dasch as Armida)

Click for more pics! 

Muti Smiles on Flimm's Moïse et Pharaon for Salzburger Festspiele

One of the coolest things about the long (and costly) process of learning Italian is that you instantly gain access to loads of information -- about opera, and everything else -- that remains blissfully untranslated into English to this day. Because if on the one hand Oxford University Press translated (some of them at least) the works of Rodolfo Celletti about belcanto, on the other hand we don't have English versions of Gavazzeni and Bortolotto and Barilli and of the Isotta book that in the 1970s shed new essential light on Rossini's opere serie.  

It's therefore a joy to see that the Salzburg Festival is showing, for the first time, Rossini's Moïse et Pharaon: opening August 8 as part of this year's Salzburger Festspiele. The Jürgen Flimm production is conducted by Riccardo Muti (awesome interview with the maestro in the other day's "Corriere della Sera").

Moïse is Ildar Abdrazakov (who appeared at la Scala -- well, at the Arcimboldi -- six years ago in the same work), Pharaon is Nicola Alaimo, Eliézer is Juan Francisco Gatell, Sinaïde is Nino Surguladze, Aménophis is Eric Cutler, Anaï is Marina Rebeka, and Osiride is Alexey Tikhomirov.

(Above: Ildar Abdrazakov and Nicola Alaimo)

Click the link below to see the rest!

Così Fan Guth: A Cast So Hawt You Will Express Your Joy

French soprano Patricia Petibon is caught in the passion over a smoking Cosi' fan Tutte cast. The new Claus Guth production opens on July 30 for the Salzburg Festival. 

Miah Persson is Fiordiligi, Isabel Leonard (who looks so happy because she bagged Teddy Tahu Rhodes and you haven't) is Dorabella and Patricia Petibon is Despina. Rounding out the males is Topi Lehtipuu as Ferrando, Florian Boesch as Guglielmo, and Bo Skovhus as Don Alfonso. 

 

(Above & below: Miah Persson and Isabel Leonard)

 

You've seen the girls...now click the link below for the man candy!

Salzburger Festspiele Poised to Open with Theodora.

Salzburger Festspiele's 2009 stage opens on Saturday, July 25 with Handel's 1750 oratorio, Theodora. Chief conductor of Mozarteum Orchestra, Ivor Bolton, spirits away director Christof Loy's vision of the rebel's martyrdom and her love, Didymus. P-Diddy(mus).

Christine Schäfer sings Theodora, Bejun Mehta is Didymus, Johannes Martin Kränzle is Valens, and Joseph Kaiser is Septimius.

(Above: Joseph Kaiser & Bejun Mehta)

(Above: Joseph Kaiser & Johannes Martin Kränzle)

(Above: Joseph Kaiser & Bejun Mehta)

(Above: Christine Schäfer & Bejun Mehta)

Click the link below for many more photos

Jommelli's Demofoonte @ Salzburg With Muti (And Without Opera Chic)

An avid fan of Salzburg's Whitsun Festival, Opera Chic went to the sweetly boring Austrian town in May 2007 and 2008, enjoying Cimarosa's Il Ritorno di Don Calandrino and Paisiello's Il Matrimonio Inaspettato.

This year, though, she's staying home, because as yummy as Demel's Esterhazytorte, as historically informed Tomaselli's coffee is, between the fact that Jommelli's musical talent is not on the same level of Paisiello's absolute genius and that Demofoonte, no disrespect intended, is simply not as engaging as Calandrino's crazy antics, OC chose to sit this edition out. 

This is not to say that the travelers who decide to shell out for the notoriously expensive tickets won't enjoy a serious treat -- the festival opens tomorrow night and the production looks great; and Riccardo Muti's baton is, like Snickers, guaranteed to satisfy. 

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More pictures after the jump.

Get Out UR Flip-Flops and Shorts: Summer Festivals Are Already Heating Up

USA Today (News Lite) is running an article on the "world's best opera festivals", focusing on Summer opera bashes both on native soil and abroad.

"[...] as any true opera aficionado will tell you, there's no better way to indulge the habit than by scoring a seat at one of the great outdoor music festivals. Sure, no one can deny the drama of attending an opera at, say, La Scala, even when a famous tenor like Roberto Alagna doesn't storm off the stage in the middle of a performance (as he did in 2006), or trembling in anticipation as soprano Renee Fleming infuses La Traviata with her singular velvet touch at the Paris Opera. But there's a world of sublime sounds out there, and it pays to plan ahead."

More like the *beginning* of the performance, Anthony. To save you precious reading time, here's who made the cut: Savonlinna Opera Festival, Santa Fe Opera, the Lucerne Festival, the Wexford Festival Opera, Tanglewood, Salzburger Festspiele, the Glyndebourne Festival, Chorégies d'Orange, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Bregenzer Festspiele, and the Arena di Verona Festival.

Snubbed this year (among many other worthies) was Glimmerglass and Pesaro's Rossini Opera Festival [edit: omg, how could I have forgotten the Fort Worth Opera Festival??] Also snubbed were my Carroll Gardens cousins who do the entire Gilbert & Sullivan repertoire in their backyard in August, on a stage made from a discarded wooden halfpipe some sk8r kids left rotting on their curb. They use my grandma's old mumu kaftan dresses for a curtain, and the ushers are the neighborhood dogs with flashlights taped to their paws. OC is serious. So, which are your favorites?