DEAR OPERA LOVERS,
During the 2010/11 season Oper Frankfurt will, once again, fulfil its duty in justifying why society needs opera, by nurturing the Ensemble, supplementing it with guest artists and performing a rich and varied repertoire with many wonderful directors and conductors.
Last season confirmed that we are on safe ground: our public are inquisitive and open to adventure. At the end of March 2010 attendance over the season, even though it contained unknown works, contemporary music and some rarities, was more than 80 % and the number of subscribers had risen to 11,100. We feel understood, why should we change?
There are three contemporary works this season. The first performances in Germany of Aribert Reimann’s Medea, which was performed for the first time at the Vienna State Opera, our partners, in late February 2010. This also marks the return of the director and stage designer Marc Arturo Marelli, who contributed considerably to the success of the glorious Gielen-Zehelein era with his stage designs and concepts (including Un ballo in maschera“, Jenufa“, Die Soldaten). Kullervo, performed for the first time in 1992, by the Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen, to whom our »Finale« series this season is dedicated. This work becomes all the more important because it will bring Christof Nel and Sebastian Weigle – the success team for our Die Frau ohne Schatten/The Woman without a Shadow production, together again. The third is Salvatore Sciarrino’s Luci mie traditrici, a masterpiece of psychology within a complex musical network.
And two baroque operas. Barrie Kosky, intendant designate of the Komische Oper Berlin, will direct a new double bill: Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle - a combination suggested by the conductor Constantinos Carydis, which fell on fruitful ground with me and the director. We can look forward to a lavish feast in the second version of Medea. David Hermann and Andrea Marcon have adapted Marc Antoine Charpentier’s Medée for the Bockenheimer Depot. We are delighted that we were able to win Anne Sophie von Otter for the title role.
We are of course aware that so called standard repertoire belongs to a balanced season. That is why there is a new Tales of Hoffmann (Roland Böer/Dale Duesing), a new Die Fledermaus (Sebastian Weigle/Christof Loy) and a new Tosca (with Andreas Kriegenburg making his house debut and the return of the highly respected Kirill Petrenko).
The Ring continues with Die Walküre (Weigle/Nemirova). A rarity from Italy enriches our season: Murder in the Cathedral, although it will be performed in English, T.S. Elliot’s original English, in a version sanctioned by the composer for performance in London.
Somthing I find particularly enticing is a, as it were, new composition of three Viennese works; Ein Lichtstrahl/A Ray of Light (Zemlinsky), Verklärte Nacht/Transfigured Night (Schönberg) and Das Lied von der Erde/The Song of the Earth (Mahler). We shall venture to stage them and have invited a very successful composer, Jens Joneleit, to construct a new edition of these works for the Bockenheimer Depot.
Over the next three years, parallel to the Ring, we will perform early operas by Wagner in concert, starting this season with Die Feen/The Fairies. It is astounding how much Tannhäuser & Lohengrin is discernible in it. The other opera being performed in concert this season is from the period of Italian verismo: Carlo Franci conducts La Wally, by Alfredo Catalani.
This season Sebastian Weigle conducts new productions of Kullervo, Die Fledermaus and Die Walküre, concert performances of Die Feen and a newly rehearsed revival of Tristan und Isolde. Other well known conductors working with our orchestra this season include the above mentioned Constantinos Carydis, Kirill Petrenko and Carlo Franci as well as Martyn Brabbins, Andrea Marcon, Friedemann Layer, Pier Giorgio Morandi, Julia Jones and Hans Drewanz, Michael Güttler and Leo Hussain.
There are some guest singers I would particularly like to mention: Claudia Barainsky as Medea, Peter Mattei as Bösewicht in Offenbach’s Hoffmann, Terje Stensvold as Wotan, Eva-Maria Westbroek as Sieglinde, Susan Bullock as Brünnhilde, Erika Sunnegardh as Tosca, Aleksandrs Antonenko as Cavaradossi, Christian Gerhaher as Eisenstein, John Tomlinson, making his debut in Frankfurt as Thomas Becket, Tatiana Lisnic as Susanna, Anne-Catherine Gillet as The Governess, Thomas Russell as Faust, Wolfgang Koch as Simon Boccanegra and Catherine Foster as Isolde and Wally. Kurt Streit returns as Tito, and Olga Mykytenko as Amalia.
The representatives of this Intendanz feel understood by those whose financial support makes this quality and artistic freedom possible. Our biggest thanks goes to the city of Frankfurt, which continually demonstrates how deeply they are committed to the opera, the next biggest to our sponsors and the Kuratorium Sektion Oper of the Patronatsverein. But, where would we be without our public – thank you!
your
WELCOME TO THE 2010/2011 SEASON
Welcome to our 2010/2011 season. Before you look through the website I would like to point some highlights out to you.
The story of Medea, obsessed with revenge, and the anti-hero Jason embraces the season. It would be well worth while comparing the first new production, a co-operation with the Vienna State Opera, of Aribert Reimann’s Medea, which received its world premiere in Vienna in February 2010, directed by Marco Arturo Marelli – and the last: Charpentier’s Médée, a French baroque opera from 1693 with Anne Sofie von Otter in the title role. We will follow the fate of two other strong women in a new production of Puccini’s masterpiece Tosca and concert performances of Catalani’s La Wally – Tosca, a woman who stands up against sadistic political power, and Wally, an emancipated outsider in a thrilling psychodrama, who share the same fate by choosing to leap to their deaths. The title figure in the new production of Aulis Sallinen’s Kullervo that I will be conducting, also commits suicide. Its rich music describes the heathen, barbaric, on the brink of civilisation world of Kullervo with a depth of soul which touched my heart immediately when I heard it for the first time. We will rediscover similar depths in Richard Wagner – his psychological technique of the leitmotif reached its zenith in Die Walküre and Tristan und Isolde - stories of lovers whose happiness is prevented from being fulfilled because of merciless ruling moral codes and which end in tragedy. But some of Wagner’s operas have a happy end: in a concert performance of his early work Die Feen we can experience his first dip into the world of fairy-tales – with magicians, spirits and fairies. Following on from our Arabella, I look forward immensely to working again with Christof Loy on Die Fledermaus, with its Viennese melange of criticism of society and a shimmering, glamorous ball Johann Strauß portrays a Viennese society which can only make its true longings felt behind a masquerade.
I hope that my little preview has awoken your interest and welcome you warmly to many entertaining evenings in the opera house.
your
The story of Medea, obsessed with revenge, and the anti-hero Jason embraces the season. It would be well worth while comparing the first new production, a co-operation with the Vienna State Opera, of Aribert Reimann’s Medea, which received its world premiere in Vienna in February 2010, directed by Marco Arturo Marelli – and the last: Charpentier’s Médée, a French baroque opera from 1693 with Anne Sofie von Otter in the title role. We will follow the fate of two other strong women in a new production of Puccini’s masterpiece Tosca and concert performances of Catalani’s La Wally – Tosca, a woman who stands up against sadistic political power, and Wally, an emancipated outsider in a thrilling psychodrama, who share the same fate by choosing to leap to their deaths. The title figure in the new production of Aulis Sallinen’s Kullervo that I will be conducting, also commits suicide. Its rich music describes the heathen, barbaric, on the brink of civilisation world of Kullervo with a depth of soul which touched my heart immediately when I heard it for the first time. We will rediscover similar depths in Richard Wagner – his psychological technique of the leitmotif reached its zenith in Die Walküre and Tristan und Isolde - stories of lovers whose happiness is prevented from being fulfilled because of merciless ruling moral codes and which end in tragedy. But some of Wagner’s operas have a happy end: in a concert performance of his early work Die Feen we can experience his first dip into the world of fairy-tales – with magicians, spirits and fairies. Following on from our Arabella, I look forward immensely to working again with Christof Loy on Die Fledermaus, with its Viennese melange of criticism of society and a shimmering, glamorous ball Johann Strauß portrays a Viennese society which can only make its true longings felt behind a masquerade.
I hope that my little preview has awoken your interest and welcome you warmly to many entertaining evenings in the opera house.
your
