A powerful revolution, a strong military touch, dry and frightful is the musical interpretation of Omar Meir Wellber, the young Israeli conductor of the last performance of the Munich festival. He pushes the Bavarian State Orchestra with wide desiring gestures. The musicians follow him with discipline and voluminous power. That does not make it easy for the stars of this repetition of the celebrated new production of Andrea Chenier of this season. Andrea Chenier The plot is full...

The Munich opera festival has developed to one of the leading opera festivals without making a big press about it. Every year in July the Bavarian State Opera presents a program consisting of a selection of the last season new productions, as well as major remakes, as well as new productions and accompanying contemporary music evenings. Two big open air spectacles enrich the voluminous program. Major attractions are the casts. Every evening represents a chance to hear the best singers on...

There was a lot to see and somehow nothing. Romeo Castellucci is the Italian director of this new and highly expected production of Tannhäuser at the Munich Nationaltheater, whose history is strongly linked with the oeuvre of Richard Wagner. Romeo Castellucci showcases strong and intense pictures in a continuous but nonetheless uneasy and unclear to follow flow of symbolic acts, and in a way absorbed in the story plot. Laureate in set design and painting in Bologna, he founded the...

March 19th 1967 is the birthday of the Salzburg Easter Festival, a creation of classical superstar Herbert von Karajan in his search of optimized conditions for the performing arts. Walkuere and the Ring der Nibelungen were his first projects to be realized together with the Berlin Philharmonic and a world class cast. Since then, the Easter Festival has gained a top position in the international festival calendar and a reputation for outstanding production for a small and exclusive circle...

The Bavarian state opera continues its cycle of new productions of operas by Guiseppe Verdi. After Il Trovatore, Rigoletto and La Forza del Destino, it is now Un ballo in Maschera to get its new presentation, directed by the young German Johannes Erath. Being a talented musician originally, he started later to become a director and worked with Willy Decker and Peter Konwitschny. Once more, the libretto of this fine Verdi opera is rather simple, clear and straight forward. This fast...

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...