https://operawire.com/salzburg-festival-2023-review-falstaff/
(Photo: © Ruth Walz) A couple of weeks ago, I had a lovely conversation with one of the dramaturgists of Salzburg Festival’s production of Verdi’s “Falstaff.” He pinpointed how strange it is for a dramaturg to hear that the staging for this production did not work, but the music did. To him, music and theater are part of the same {…}
https://operawire.com/salzburg-festival-2023-review-i-capuleti-e-i-montecchi/
(Photo: ©SF Marco Borrelli) It is believed that there are no bad orchestras, just bad conductors. Following this rationale, Marco Armiliato conducting my high school orchestra in David Gefffen Hall would be greeted with rave reviews. It is not that he wrung water out of stones—this miracle belongs exclusively to Moses’s staff. But, he did lead Salzburg’s Mozarteum Orchestra to {…}
https://operawire.com/salzburg-festival-2023-review-the-greek-passion/
(Photo: SF/Monika Rittershaus) Bohuslav Martinů’s opera “The Greek Passion” is a work still in search of its audience. The opera, seldom performed, is considered to be one of Martinů’s finest compositions. This season’s Salzburg Festival tried hard to make “The Greek Passion” a rare and visually noteworthy production. But it didn’t quite work out. The opera’s political radicalness and musical accomplishments are {…}
https://operawire.com/salzburg-festival-recital-2023-review-asmik-grigorian-lukas-geniusas/
(Photo: © SF/Marco Borrelli) It is always good when a song recital does not include the usual suspects of the Lieder repertoire (you know who they are). This is nothing against “Die schöne Müllerin” or “Dichterliebe.” However, Asmik Grigorian and Lukas Geniušas’s recital was exciting because it featured Rachmaninoff songs, along with some small pieces by Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov for {…}
https://operawire.com/apple-music-classical-partners-with-the-salzburg-festival/
(Photo credit: Salzburg Festiva)l Apple Music Classical has partnered with the Salzburg Festival. Listeners are offered exclusive audio recordings and playlists from the Salzburg Festival, both past and present. Spatial Audio’s remastering a number of iconic recordings from past Festivals, with the 2009 recital from Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire featured. Festival officials commented in a press release that,”The Salzburg {…}
https://operawire.com/salzburg-festival-2023-review-macbeth/
Photo credit: SF Bernd Uhlig In one of his literary excursions, the great Portuguese author Eça de Queiroz reviewed the premiere of Verdi’s “Macbeth” in Lisbon. He did not see the original Italian version of the opera, but the revised French one and quite likely with the same cast as in Paris. Eça insisted that Verdi was the greatest living {…}
https://operawire.com/hankyeol-yoon-wins-salzburg-festivals-prestigious-young-conductors-award/
(Credit: © SF/Marco Borrelli) The Salzburg Festival has announced that Hankyeol Yoon is the 2023 winner of the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award. This is the 11th time that the award has been presented and it comes with a 15,000 euro prize. Yoon will also get the opportunity to conduct a Festival concert with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra {…}
https://operawire.com/salzburg-festival-2023-review-the-indian-queen/
Photo credit: © SF/Marco Borrell It might be unfair to name Purcell as the composer of “The Indian Queen.” The opera, left unfinished, has been restored from the composer’s fragments mostly through the efforts of Teodor Currentzis and Peter Sellars. They managed to give some theatrical shape to the arias and added music from elsewhere in Purcell’s corpus that made {…}
https://operawire.com/salzburg-festival-recital-2023-review-renee-fleming-eugene-kissin-in-recital/
Photo credit: SF/Marco Borell This was a fancy recital: Renée Fleming and Evgeny Kissin. The audience was also the “who’s who” of classical music. Just behind me, Cecilia Bartoli is seated with her mother, the emerita Silvana Bazzoni. Not far away, Jeanine De Bique and Sabine Devieilhe. Other non-operatic essential names pop all from the balconies. They all came to {…}