Sergei Prokofiev was very fond of the story when he first red the novel of Valeri Brjussow and found some autobiographical parallels with his own life, relations and philosophical orientation. His inner conflict between rationalism and Christian belief, reality and surrealism, love and affection, demon and obsession. He started the composition during his exile years in Paris and Ettal, Germany. After the unsuccessful first presentation, he composed a second version, which he was not able...

Benedikt von Peter, currently head of at the Theater Bremen and designated head of Lucerne theater from 2016 onwards, has gained reputation for sophisticated deeply analytical directions of operas, opening new views on characters, their relations and plots. Focussing on libretto and strongly on the musical composition, he gains new aspects which he consequently transfers into his realisation. Some key elements of his view on Aida have been published before the opening evening. He...

The first premiere of the new season of the Bavarian State Opera is a historical premiere too. First time Arrigo Boito's opera Mefistofele on stage here. Arrigo Boito is one of the glamorous artists of Italy in the last 19th century. Educated in music, he was a literary, a librettist and a composer, but also a political and philosophical active person too. As a founding member of the avant-garde artist group "I Scapigliatura", the tousled - he represented the newly found...

The Richard Strauss Tage, a kind of festival of the Semperoper Dresden, is dedicated to the Bavarian composer Richard Strauss, who has worked for several years at the renown opera house and especially colaborated with the Saxonian Staatskapelle. It was here, that his worldwide reputation as a composer has shown his first success. Several of his operas where first performed here, his major symphonic compositions took birth here. So this year within others saw the celebration of the...

What a story, what a character Richard Strauss and his co-genius Hugo von Hoffmannsthal have created here at the beginning of the 20th century. The expressive music and the female wild brutality were shocking and affecting the audience at the same time. Elektra, full of grieve, is seeking for revenge for her beloved father's death, accusing her mother and stepfather, exposing herself in front of the palace as a living monument of self destruction, desire up to mentally defection and...

The creation of Ariadne auf Naxos originally led to a novelty in music history. It was the desire to support the work of their friend Max Reinhardt that Richard Strauss and his genius librettist Hugo von Hoffmannsthal brought the intention to combine a play with a lyric opera in one piece. So, they brought together the drama by Jean Baptiste Molière Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, enriched with ballett music and the Greek tragic story of the unhappy love of Ariadne, liberated by the god...