Maggio Musicale Fiorentino opens on April 26, and the full program introduced today at a press event is very, very cool.
The theme for this years' Tuscan festival is dedicated to peace and to women: operas (Carmen, Lady Macbeth, Hans Werner Henze's Phaedra), concerts (Lupu, Mehta, Muti, Chailly, Ozawa, Remmereit), ballet and theater.
Clearly, a major event is the Italian premiere of a work that had its world premiere just seven months ago, Phaedra by the greatest living composer, Hans Werner Henze (already sold out, good luck with the scalpers and on eBay, it's what we'll have to do, too).
Charlotte Rampling, OC's dear Auntie Charlotte will be the narrator of Schoenberg's A Survivor From Warsaw, a multimedia performance directed by Peter Greenaway and conducted by Zubin Mehta (that night, Mehta will also conduct Haydn's Missa in tempore belli, the Wartime Mass, and Britten's Requiem Symphony, all with Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino).
Carmen will be directed by Carlos Saura, with a big cast: Julia Gertseva, Elena Maximova, Marcelo Alvarez, Carl Tanner, Inva Mula, Serena Daolio, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Dario Solari. James Conlon will conduct Lady Macbeth, directed by crazy genius Lev Dodin.
Riccardo Muti will conduct a night of Mozart, Beethoven and Cherubini, Gewandhaus Orchester under Riccardo Chailly wil kick some serious German butt, then the Wiener Philharmoniker, Radu Lupu, Ozawa, Lang Lang, until the big finale on July 1 in Florence's Piazza della Signoria, Mehta conducting Beethoven's Ninth.
We're feuertrunken already.