Live Concert from Salzburg for free

René Fleming will sing several songs by Richard Strauss and a scene from Arabella. She will be accompanied by the Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by Christian Thielemann, who will then in the second part perform An Alpine Symphony.

The concert will be live broadcast on Medici.tv starting from 9 p.m. (CET), this coming Monday, August 8th. Here is your link.

From the famous Confiserie Fürst in Salzburg [where you can also find the "real" Mozartkugeln -- the blue ones!]

The program of songs includes Befreit, Winterliebe, Traum durch die Dämmerung, and Gesang der Apollopriesterin.

Alek Shrader in Salzburg

I am not going to Salzburg this year for at least three reasons and my only regret is that I won't see one of my dearest operas, The Makropulos Affair, with our favorite Angela Denoke who --together with Johan Reuter and Aleš Briscein-- will certainly make this new Christoph Marthaler production extra special. To that add Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting and you get more than a trip worthy material!

My problem is that this is about the only thing I am truly interested in in Salzburg this summer. Macbeth by Peter Stein, and with his bitterness Maestro Muti in the pit, is not exactly what would make me run to the Felsenreitschule even if I were in Salzburg right now.
As for Die Frau ohne Schatten (FroSch) it is an opera I like very much music-wise but again that alone would not make me make a trip to Salzburg in spite of its smashing cast [sadly the runs of FroSch and Makrop do not overlap, since they are both given at the big Festspielhaus]. Another thing about FroSch is that its premiere was live broadcast on German and Austrian TVs and since the video will be around soon...

Alek Shrader in Salzburg

Finally a revival of the Claus Guth production of Da Ponte Trilogy is of course a nice treat, but since I already saw all three operas both at the Haus für Mozart in Salzburg and on DVD, I guess it's fine to let my place to other folks to discover and enjoy the wonderful festival atmosphere in Salzburg (when the weather is good, that is).

Salzburg and Chorégie d'Orange 2011

Full schedule with all operas (with all the details), concerts, recitals... for the Summer Festival in Salzburg 2011, are available on the Festival website.  Note that you can already place your ticket(s) order. The most (only?) interesting should be The Makropulos Affair -- which I believe is one of the best operas ever. With Marthaler directing, Esa-Pekka conducting, this should be the most important event of the Salzburger Festspiele 2011. OK, Die Frau ohne Schatten should be good too.

On a different front, the Festival in Chorégie d'Orange unveiled their program for 2011. Details can be found on their website. In short, there will be two shows of Aida, two of Rigoletto, and a concert performance of Mahler's 9th.

Salzburg 2011: Easter and Summer Festival

As we all know the Salzburg Festival celebrated its 90th anniversary this year. But besides the Summer Festival, Salzburg also hosts the Easter Festival [initiated by Herbert von Karajan (not fave) in 1967], and so every year you may hop to Salzburg for your Easter holidays and enjoy a series of concerts and one new opera production. There is a snag however: the seats are prohibitively expensive, but since the shows are co-produced with regular opera houses you can opt for a more affordable solution and see the same production at co-producer's.

Last year the Paris Opera was a co-producer and so we could see a hideous production of Niccolo Giommelli's opera Demofoonte [dir. Cesare Lievi, cond. Riccardo Muti] at Palais Garnier.
This year the opera production was Die Götterdämmerung [dir. Stéphane Braunschweig, cond. Simon Rattle] which was premiered at the Festival in Aix-en-Provence 2009, and was pretty awful too.

To break the spell of awful productions the organizers decided to engage Stefan Herheim and Heike Scheele (who else?!) and propose in 2011 a new production of Salomé -- with Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, and the cast: Emily Magee, Iain Paterson, Pavol Breslik, Stig Andersen, Hanna Schwarz. Two shows are scheduled for April 16 and 25 2011.

I heard that two other opera houses co-produce the show, one of which is supposedly Semperoper Dresden. If anyone knows more about this, please do share it with us...

As for the Summer Festival 2011...