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Luigi Nono's Prometeo at the Ruhrtriennale

Helmut Pitsch

Tragedia dell' ascolto was the classification of his opera by Luigi Nono. He was born 1924 in Venice and he had a strong relation to his home town. His composition style was formed by the sound and the special hearing environment of the laguna city with its echoing waters, greenless brick architecture of stairs, arcades and narrow streets. Even if he was a music revolutionary and the creator of contemporary Italian music, he was still very close to the traditional composing education...


Ernani at the Salzburg Festival

Helmut Pitsch

The final days of the prestigious Salzburg Festival still offer highlights, hosting highly regarded international classic stars and reknown orchestras, as Maestro Riccardo Muti and his Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini, founded in 2004, who appear with a concert version of Giuseppe Verdi's early opera, Ernani. It is the touching lovestory of Ernani and Elvira and the heroic honorship of Ernani, fulfilling his deadly oath once he has succeeded in life. It is the puzzling...


Fidelio with Jonas Kaufmann at the Salzburg Festival

Helmut Pitsch

Lot of open questions, the audience remains clueless, some show their disappointment and incomprehension after a new interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven's only and beloved opera Fidelio. It is this year's main new opera production of the acclaimed Salzburg Festival. This piece is for most music lovers the incarnation of a freedom drama and the triumph of love. The German director Claus Guth has put his hands on this drama of his compatriote to convert it to a revolutionary new...


The Tales of Hoffmann at the Bregenz Festival

Helmut Pitsch

It is an artistic concept of the Norwegian director Stefan Herheim which converts the traditional perceptions of a play. It is his way of a very intelligent nearly limitless presentation of the reconstruction of a piece. He shows in Hoffmann a man, who deconstructs himself, looking for his identity in his tales, which we all thought to know so far. Stefan Herheim further develops his radical concept by analysing the composer and the time of creation. Having said so, it is easier to...


Il trovatore at the Chorégies d'Orange

Emmanuel Andrieu

Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore is a legendary opera that returns often to the Chorégies d'Orange; older opera fans still remember the famous 1972 production featuring Montserrat Caballé at her zenith, the sonorous Lando Bartolini, the hair-raising Irina Arkhipova and thoroughbred Piero Cappuccilli in the principal roles. In 2015, the star for the evening is Roberto Alagna, who has appeared regularly on the stage of the Théâtre Antique since 1993, but who...


Die Eroberung von Mexico at the Salzburg Festival

Helmut Pitsch

The title is misleading as it is not mentioned to be a historical drama. The libretto of this opera is taken from surrealistic texts by Antonin Artaud dating from 1933, and are enriched by lyrics by Octavio Paz. It is actually a musical drama without a narrative, even it is linked to the historical fact of the conquest of America, but the composer's intention is more to accuse our civilisation, social organisation, capitalism, war and after all the central relation between man and...


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