10 March 2010

New Jury Members for the Young Directors Project in 2010

powered by Montblanc International

The jury of the directors’ competition YOUNG DIRECTORS PROJECT, founded in 2002 by Artistic Director Jürgen Flimm and curated since 2007 by Martine Dennewald and Thomas Oberender, will feature a number of new jurors this year:

The new jury members for 2010 are Birgit Minichmayr, Andrea Schurian and Klaus Maria Brandauer.

Festival President Helga Rabl-Stadler and gallery owner Thaddaeus Ropac complete the five-member jury.

Similarly to the program, which is curated anew each year and was able to present productions from North America and Asia during recent years, thanks to financial support from Montblanc International, the members of the jury change regularly.


This year, the project includes productions by Jakop Ahlbom ( Netherlands ), Sylvain Creuzevault ( France ), Angela Richter ( Germany ) and Claude Schmitz ( Belgium ).


Among the prize winners of recent years are Alvis Hermanis, the companies Peeping Tom and Nature Theatre of Oklahoma as well as Dries Verhoeven in 2009.


This year’s Montblanc YDP Award will be announced and presented at a ceremony on August 21, 2010 at 11 am at republic.

The YDP program, the € 10,000 prize and the exclusive Montblanc Max-Reinhardt-Pen for the best director are sponsored by Montblanc International.

SALZBURG FESTIVAL 2010 OPERA

At the center of the 2010 opera program stands the topic of Myths – myths with their potential to represent fundamental human experiences and situations.


DIONYSOS

Wolfgang Rihm (*1952), one of the most well-known and versatile German contemporary composers, is writing his new musical theater work Dionysos for the Salzburg Festival, to be given its world premiere at the beginning of the 2010 Festival summer.

The inspiration and point of departure for Rihm’s newest work is Friedrich Nietzsche’s late cycle of poems Dionysos-Dithyramben. How the god of inebriation figures in the texts of the philosopher already succumbing to madness, how his difficult relationship with the most important women in his life can be represented by music, motion and imagery, how the extremely sensitized author himself can become a brilliant theatrical event, all that will be shown by stage director Pierre Audi, who has a vast range of experience in working with visual artists.
The sets will be designed by the German artist Jonathan Meese (*1970), who grew up in Japan and is one of the most influential figures on the international art scene. Nietzsche has been a recurring topic in his oeuvre.

In order to realize Rihm’s kaleidoscope of scenes at the Haus für Mozart, the Salzburg Festival has invited not only Pierre Audi and Jonathan Meese, but also conductor Ingo Metzmacher, celebrated here during the past summer in Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore. He conducts his own Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO) and the Vienna State Opera Chorus. Johannes Martin Kränzle, who made a great impression during the summer of 2009 in Handel’s Theodora, sings the title role. Further main roles feature Mojca Erdmann, who began her international career in Salzburg in Armida, as well as the German tenor Matthias Klink.


ELEKTRA

The archaic and primordial, Dionysian elements of Greek tragedy as well as Nietzsche’s influence are also evident in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s exploration of myths. Elektra (1906-1908), the first collaboration between the Festival founders Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, will be presented at the Großes Festspielhaus in 2010. Strauss saw Hofmannsthal’s 1903 play Elektra at its world premiere, directed by another founding father of the Festival, Max Reinhardt, and decided to set it to music.
In Salzburg, the internationally successful Italian conductor Daniele Gatti will lead the Vienna Philharmonic in this highly expressive work. The main roles have been cast with four



outstanding Strauss interpreters: Iréne Theorin, a shooting star among dramatic sopranos, will sing the role of Elektra, Waltraud Meier performs the role of Klytämnestra, Eva-Maria Westbroek will embody Chrysothemis and René Pape Orest. After directing acclaimed productions of Idomeneo in 1990-1991 and Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten in 2005, Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s Elektra will be his third Salzburg Festival production.


EXHIBIT: THE SALZBURG FESTIVAL AT 90

With its production of Elektra as part of the opera program, the Salzburg Festival commemorates its founding in 1920. This 90-year anniversary and the 50-year anniversary of the opening of the Großes Festspielhaus are evoked by many elements of the 2010 opera, concert and drama program of the Salzburg Festival. One central element of the celebrations is the exhibit Grand World Theater – 90 Years of the Salzburg Festival 1920-2010, on view at various locations throughout Salzburg from July 17 to October 26, 2010.


ORFEO ED EURIDICE

Just like Elektra, Christoph Willibald Gluck’s reform opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) marks a key moment in the historic reception of the myths of antiquity.
Dieter Dorn, who has distinguished himself with a series of major drama productions at the Salzburg Festival (including the world premiere of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Macht der Gewohnheit in 1974) as well as Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos and most recently Henze’s L’Upupa, will direct this production. Maestro Riccardo Muti, whose discography includes a standard-setting recording of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, will conduct the Vienna Philharmonic at the Großes Festspielhaus. Two leading Austrian singers, Elisabeth Kulman and Genia Kühmeier, as well as the Bavarian soprano Christiane Karg, who studied at Salzburg’s Mozarteum, will form the trio of soloists in a story in which everything is motivated by love.


LULU

The power of Eros can also be experienced in this year’s program in two figures that have nearly mythical dimensions: Lulu, a figure Alban Berg dedicated his second opera (1928-1935) to and whom he considered a female counterpart of Don Juan, will be embodied by the incomparable French soprano Patricia Petibon. Michael Schade, Michael Volle, Pavol Breslik and Franz Grundheber play the men who accompany Lulu’s rise and fall.
The Sofia-born and German-trained director Vera Nemirova (*1973) makes her Salzburg Festival debut with this production. “Her grasp of pieces is strong. Instead of awe, she approaches her subjects with love, by touching them, confronting them, grasping them: by changing, she preserves” – this was part of the jury’s verdict when it awarded the young director the Berlin Art Prize. The German conductor Marc Albrecht (*1964), who has won acclaim mainly for his interpretations of Strauss and Wagner works as well as his championship of contemporary music, will conduct the Vienna Philharmonic. In 2001 he conducted the world premiere of Peter Ruzicka’s opera Celan at Dresden’s Semper Opera; from 2003 to 2006 he conducted Der fliegende Holländer at the Bayreuth Festival. In 2003, he made his Salzburg Festival debut with Egon Wellesz’s Die Bakchantinnen.



Daniel Richter, one of the most important contemporary painters, returns to the Salzburg Festival as a set designer after his successful work in 2008 on Cantata profana/Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. The invitations to Daniel Richter and Jonathan Meese as set designers during the Salzburg Festival’s anniversary year illustrates the high value the Festival attaches not only to music and performing arts, but also the visual arts.


DON GIOVANNI & ROMEO ET JULIETTE

The young Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin (*1975), who won international acclaim for his 2008 Salzburg Festival debut, will conduct not only a new production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette (directed by Bartlett Sher) with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg this summer, but also Mozart’s Don Giovanni (directed by Claus Guth) with the Vienna Philharmonic.
The team of Don Giovanni and Leporello will be embodied once again by Christopher Maltman and Erwin Schrott. The female leads will be sung by Aleksandra Kurzak as Donna Anna, Dorothea Röschmann as Elvira and Anna Prohaska as Zerlina. Joseph Kaiser and Joel Prieto will share the role of Don Ottavio.
The roles of Juliette and Roméo will be sung at the Felsenreitschule by world star Anna Netrebko alternating with Nino Machaidze, and Piotr Beczala alternating with Stephen Costello.


NORMA

Another opera featured in the 2010 Salzburg Festival program which focuses on myths is Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma (1831). Richard Wagner compared this work to antique tragedies, and Schopenhauer admired it as a “most perfect tragedy”. The central protagonist of the opera is the Druid priestess Norma, a role that will be sung in two concert performances at the Großes Festspielhaus by the Prima donna assoluta of bel canto, Edita Gruberova. Her partners will be Joyce DiDonato, Marcello Giordani and Ferruccio Furlanetto. Friedrich Haider conducts the Camerata Salzburg.


YOUNG SINGERS PROJECT
sponsored by Credit Suisse

The popular public master classes of the “Young Singers”, who are on the verge of joining the artistic elite and receive some finishing educational touches here, take place on four afternoons at the Main University Auditorium. The Mozarteum Orchestra under Ivor Bolton will accompany the young artists for their final concert, when they present their stage accomplishments to an international audience.
 

BEFORE THE MOVE – AN OUTSTANDING GARSINGTON MANOR FINALE


In 2011, Garsington Opera will move to a new home whose location is to be announced shortly. Before that, the 2010 season, the last at Garsington Manor, will reflect the qualities that have characterised Garsington Opera over the 21 years since it began.

While 2010 will see the return of talented conductors, directors and singers who have helped seal Garsington Opera’s reputation, the season will also, in true Garsington tradition, introduce exciting new artists, drawn from around the world, and encompass its policy of presenting gems from the repertoire that are rarely seen. Rossini’s wonderful and romantic opera Armida receives its first ever British production at Garsington this year.

The season opens and closes with the opera that launched Garsington Opera at Garsington Manor – Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro – in a revival by John Cox of his outstanding production which was a glorious highlight of the 2005 season. Douglas Boyd, whose Fidelio was a major success at Garsington in 2009, conducts a talented young cast.

Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be directed by Danny Slater whose previous work includes memorable productions at Garsington of La Cenerentola and Don Pasquale. Steuart Bedford, who worked with Britten over many years and assisted the composer in his recording of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, will conduct.

The final Rossini at Garsington Manor will be the first British production of one of his Neapolitan masterpieces, Armida. It will be directed by Martin Duncan, whose production of Mirandolina in 2009 was so well received, with renowned Rossini interpreter David Parry conducting. This romantic opera involves magic powers and, appropriately, an enchanted garden.

All three operas will find an ideal setting in the summer garden of Garsington Manor during a season that runs from 2 June to 3 July 2010
ADVANCE INFORMATION

last season at Garsington Manor before moving to a new location

2 June – 3 July 2010

 2,6,12,18, 23, 27 June, 1,  3 July  5.30pm

LE NOZZE DI FIGARO

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Conductor  Douglas Boyd

Director  John Cox

Designer Robert Perdziola

Cast

Sophie Bevan, Anna Grevelius, James Oldfield, Kishani Jayasinghe, Conal Coad, Grant Doyle, Jean Rigby, Daniel Norman,

Stuart Haycock, Mary Bevan, Aidan Smith

(sung in Italian)

5, 7, 13, 19, 22, 25, 29  June  5.50pm

FIRST BRITISH PRODUCTION

ARMIDA

Gioacchino Rossini

Conductor  David Parry

Director  Martin Duncan

Designer  Ashley Martin-Davis

Cast

Jessica Pratt, Victor Ryan Robertson, David Alegret, Bogdan Mihai, Christophoros Stamboglis, Nicholas Watts

 (sung in Italian)

17, 20, 24, 26, 30  June, 2 July 5.50pm

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Benjamin Britten

Conductor  Steuart Bedford

Director  Daniel Slater

Designer  Francis O’Connor

Cast

Rebecca Bottone, James Laing, Andrew Staples, George von Bergen,

Anna Stéphany, Katherine Manley, Neal Davies, Pascal Charbonneau,

Jonathan Best, Sion Goronwy, Marke Wilde, Robert Gildon,

Patricia Orr, Conal Coad

Trinity Boys Choir

(sung in English)

GARSINGTON OPERA ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS

Garsington Opera, Garsington Manor, Oxford OX44 9DH

General enquiries  01865 361636

www.garsington opera.org