Salzburg Festival Special

 

Each Wednesday and Friday in July, the viewers of Stingray Classica can enjoy illustrious masterpieces, performed at recent editions of the Salzburg Festival! Stingray Classica broadcasts no less than eight concerts from this Mozartian venue. Enjoy Giuseppe Verdi’s operas Falstaff and Don Carlos, Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 and Joseph Haydn's Die Jahreszeiten. Moreover, the Salzburg Festival would not be complete without a contemporary take on the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, composed by Salzburg's very own W. A. Mozart! 

The special features famous conductors, like Gustavo Dudamel, Zubin Mehta and Pierre Boulez. Maestro Daniel Barenboim will once again show his phenomenal understanding of Beethoven’s music as soloist in the composer’s fourth Piano Concerto. Don’t miss out on two premieres: Mendelssohn’s a Midsummer Night’s Dream under the baton of Ivor Bolton and the Opening Concert of 2011, with splendid vocal performances by singers Dorothea Röschmann and Anna Prohaska! 

Wednesday, July 4 at 21:00 | Haydn - The Seasons

From the Großes Festspielhaus: The Opening Concert of the Salzburg Festival 2013 - "Die Jahreszeiten" (The Seasons) by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). Conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt; Dorothea Röschmann (soprano), Michael Schade (tenor), Florian Boesch (bass), Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. After "The Creation" (1798), "The Seasons" (1801) are Haydn's second great German-language oratorio. It describes the seasons from the perspective of farmers: spring is the time of sowing and hope, in summer the whole nature revives, autumn brings harvest, hunting and vintage, in winter fog and darkness come. The popular four-part work is a summary of all that Haydn was able to describe in music.

Friday, July 6 at 21:00 | Mahler - Symphony No. 8

Which work could be more suitable for Gustavo Dudamel and his Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra - formerly known as the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, the most well-known flagship ensemble of El Sistema - to mark the highlight of the residency of El Sistema at the Salzburg Festival than Gustav Mahler's Eighth, the "Symphony of a Thousand"? Eight top-notch soloists - among them Emily Magee, Juliane Banse, Klaus Florian Vogt and Kurt Rydl -, four choruses and the 200 orchestra musicians stretch the limits of the immense stage of the Großes Festspielhaus. "The invasion of sheer enthusiasm" (Der Standard).

Wednesday, July 11 at 21:00 | Verdi – Falstaff

From Salzburg Festival: "Falstaff" by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). Conductor: Zubin Mehta - Stage director: Damiano Michieletto. With Ambrogio Maestri (Sir John Falstaff), Fiorenza Cedolins (Mrs Alice Ford), Massimo Cavalletti (Ford), Eleonora Buratto (Nannetta), Elisabeth Kulman (Mrs Quickly), Javier Camarena (Fenton). In his last opera Verdi was aiming not to revive an amusing or ridiculous figure in the tradition of the Italian opera buffa but to portray a human character in all his different facets. In cooperation with the experienced librettist Arrigo Boito he wrote a lyric comedy quite unlike any other.

Friday, July 13 at 14:00 | Verdi - Don Carlos

From the Salzburg Festival: "Don Carlo" by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). Conductor: Antonio Pappano - Stage director: Peter Stein. With Matti Salminen (Philip II), Jonas Kaufmann (Don Carlos), Anja Harteros (Elisabeth of Valois), Thomas Hampson (Marquis of Posa), Ekaterina Semenchuk (Princess Eboli), Eric Halfvarson (The Grand Inquisitor). Friedrich Schiller was one of Verdi's favourite dramatists along with Shakespeare and Victor Hugo; the setting of "Don Carlos" is the longest and most ambitious of all his operas. In no other opera did Verdi explore such a rich variety of human relationships as in "Don Carlo". His music invokes no less powerfully the scenes of the action and the atmosphere of hopelessness that dominates this dark drama from the very beginning.

 

Wednesday, July 18 at 21:00 | Mendelssohn - A Midsummer Night’s Dream

From the Residenzhof Salzburg, discover A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare with breathtaking music by Felix Mendelssohn. Under the baton of Ivor Bolton, this performance was adapted by Henry Mason and directed by Henry Mason. Shakespeare masterfully ties together complex layers of action: three lovers who try to find their true love, escapes, mix-ups and love potions, complexity and ambiguity as inherent as only in dreams. Mendelssohn's enchanting music which he wrote for a production of this play is the perfect completion. "This music is like flying on a magic carpet" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). "What a feast of fantasy! What a feast for the senses!" (Stuttgarter Zeitung).

Friday, July 20 at 14:00 | Salzburg Festival: Opening Concert 2011

In the Mahler year 2011, the eminent Pierre Boulez conducted the traditional opening concert of the Wiener Philharmoniker at the Salzburg Festival. The concert begins with the "Lulu Suite" by Gustav Mahler's pupil Alban Berg. The music for the tragic temptress is sung here by the dazzling young soprano Anna Prohaska. In Berg's concert aria "Der Wein", Dorothea Röschmann delivers a masterful interpretation. The main work of the concert is Mahler's "Das klagende Lied" - a great spectral opera for the mind's eye scored for massive orchestral and vocal forces; the soloists are Dorothea Röschmann, Anna Larsson and Johan Botha.

Wednesday, July 25 at 21:00 | Mozart - Die Entführung aus dem Serail

From Hangar-7 at the Salzburg Airport: "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" (The Abduction from the Seraglio) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). Conductor: Hans Graf - Stage director: Adrian Marthaler. With Desirée Rancatore (Konstanze), Javier Camarena (Belmonte), Rebecca Nelsen (Blonde), Kurt Rydl (Osmin), Thomas Ebenstein (Pedrillo), Tobias Moretti (Bassa Selim). An adventure for anyone interested in a new and different way of experiencing opera and TV: Ordinarily home to a collection of historic airplanes and racecars, a space for art exhibits, a restaurant, bars and a café, Hangar-7 turns into an opera setting and a TV studio for Mozart's Singspiel about an abduction - performed not on stage in front of a seated audience, but at various locations embedded in the normal course of evening events at Hangar-7. The individual scenes form a unified whole when viewed on screen.

Friday, July 27 at 21:00 | Salzburg Festival: Opening Concert 2010

The opening concert of the Salzburg Festival, for many regarded as the world's most renowned music festival, is by tradition a high-profile event. In 2010 the Festival celebrated its 90th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of the Great Festival Hall. The official opening concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by Daniel Barenboim, one of today's leading pianists and conductors who 45 years ago had made his debut at the Salzburg Festival. The event opened with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with Daniel Barenboim as soloist and conductor. Followed by five "Notations" for Orchestra by Pierre Boulez, the highly acclaimed concert ended with Anton Bruckner's "Te Deum", performed by the famous singers Dorothea Röschmann, Elina Garanca, Klaus Florian Vogt and René Pape, the Chorus of the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.