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A Celebration for Mozart
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MOZART-TWO-6
Production Management
Silvia Kargl
Music
W. A. Mozart & Fazil Say
Choreography, Sets & Costumes
Elio Gervasi
Artists
Fazil Say (Klavier / piano), Celalettin Bigel (Ney / ney), Burcu Soysev (Sopran / soprano), Aykut Köserleli (Kudum / kudum)
Dance
Tanz Company Gervasi (Esther Koller, Leonie Wahl, Tae Hee Kim, Alexander Gottfarb, Karl Schreiner, Radek Hewelt)
World Premiere
01.02.2006, 20:30
Dates
02.02. & 03.02.2006, 20:30
Place
Tanzquartier Wien, Halle G
Tickets & Info
Tanzquartier Wien, Studios
Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Wien
Tel. / Phone: +43-1-581 35 91
E-mail: tanzquartier@tqw.at
Web
www.fazilsay.net
www.tanz.company.gervasi.at
www.tqw.at
For information about the MuseumsQuartier Wien, please see:
www.mqw.at
Elio Gervasi and his Company Gervasi create a choreography to music by Mozart and Fazil Say. Say himself accompanies the performances on the piano.
Inspired by Mozart’s music, the internationally acclaimed pianist and composer Fazil Say makes his first foray into composing for a dance ensemble with a new work created in collaboration with the renowned choreographer Elio Gervasi. The premiere of Say’s Quartet for Piano, Soprano, Ney and Percussion will be combined in alternation with piano works by Mozart. Say will accompany the performances live on stage.
Mozart’s music is frequently described as dance-like, but its wealth of themes and fast tempos present many challenges to choreographers. Say and Gervasi chose a new, contemporary approach. Say composes without using predetermined content. The choreography receives a creative impetus from his pianistic interpretation of Mozart, the new composition, and the inner images the music evokes. Even some of Fazil Say’s own movements find their way into Gervasi’s choreography.
The Company Gervasi is an outstanding contemporary dance ensemble. The choreographies are developed by Gervasi together with his dancers. Gervasi’s work is imaginative; his language of movements is fed by his personal experiences and his highly developed power of observation. In combination with the music, and the stage sets that Gervasi himself helps to design, subtle moving pictures arise, imbued with delicate moods.
The collaboration of choreographer Elio Gervasi and composer Fazil Say proves that dance can arise from music alone. The success of this integration of musical and visual dimensions stems not from historical quotations, but from an intensive involvement with Mozart in our own time.
Plattform für junge Musiker
Idea and Organisation
Michael Lessky
Conductor
Michael Lessky
Director
Silvia Armbruster
Artists
Rebecca Nelsen / Julia Koci (Fiordiligi), Rita Schneider (Dorabella), Ursula Ruperti (Despina), Rafael Alvarez (Ferrando), Matthias Helm (Guglielmo), Steffen Rössler (Don Alfonso)
Orchestra
Junge Philharmonie Wien
Location
Schönbrunner Schlosstheater
Dates
17. and 19.09.2006, 19:30
Tickets
Wien-Ticket
Tel.: +43-1-58885
www.wien-ticket.at
Schönbrunner Schlosstheater
Web
www.wienmozart2006.at
www.jungephilharmonie.at
Mozart’s masterpiece in an independent production with the Junge Philharmonie conducted by Michael Lessky One of the special aims of WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006 is to give creative young artists an opportunity to express themselves. Mozart: Cos?! , a project by Junge Philharmonie Wien (in cooperation with the Herbert von Karajan Centrum), offers a special platform for young musicians. Mozart’s Cos? fan tutte will be presented in a fresh, youthful production, featuring an international ensemble of singers, with Michael Lessky conducting the Junge Philharmonie Wien and Silvia Armbruster as stage director.
The Junge Philharmonie Wien was founded in 1997 on the initiative of Michael Lessky. The cultural department of the Austrian broadcasting corporation ORF describes the orchestra as an elite ensemble of young performers that brings together the best of Austria’s up-and-coming musicians aged between 15 and 25.
Aufführung von "Ulisse in Campania" von Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini (Zeitgenossin Mozarts)
Idea
Patricia Adkins Chiti
Organisation
Fondazione Adkins Chiti: Donne in Musica and
WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006
Music & Text
Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini
Conductor
Riccardo Martinini
Director
Patricia Adkins Chiti
Choreographer
Mario Piazza
Soloists
Michele D’Abundo, Carmela Marina Fabbiano,
Marina di Marco, Valentina Molinari
Dancers
Ludovic Party, Alessia Cutigni, Marilisa Puppi
Orchestra, Chorus
Coro ed Orchestra del Centro Italiano di Musica Antica
Premiere
21.09.2006, 19:00
Dates
22., 23.09.2006, 19:00
Place
Schlosstheater Schönbrunn,
Schloss Schönbrunn, 1130 Vienna
Tickets & Info
Phone: +43-1-58 999
www.wien-ticket.at
Web
www.donneinmusica.org A “serenata” by Mozart’s contemporary Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini (1720-1795), at the Schlosstheater Schönbrunn
A serenata by Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini (1720-1795) in the Schlosstheater Schönbrunn
This guest performance of Ulisse in Campania represents the rediscovery of a woman composer from the time of W. A. Mozart. The production was organised by the foundation for women in music "Fondazione Adkins Chiti: Donne in Musica". The music will be performed by the Orchestra Barocca Italiana, the Coro da camera del CIMA and young Italian soloists, under the baton of Riccardo Martinini. The production will be directed by Patricia Adkins Chiti, the president and founder of the foundation.
Patricia Adkins Chiti discovered the manuscript of Ulisse in Campania in a library. Adkins Chiti organised the printing of the score and the orchestral parts and put together an ensemble to perform the work. This work has not been performed for over 200 years. In September 2006, three guest performances will be given in Vienna in the authentic setting of the Schlosstheater Schönbrunn.
Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini
The composer was born in Milan in 1720. Her talent was revealed at an early age. The daughter of a respected mathematician in Milan, Maria Teresa Agnesi astonished visitors to her home with her singing and harp playing and even played her own compositions. She grew up in a well-to-do family of 22 children. Maria Teresa’s first opera, Il restauro d’Arcadia , was premiered in Milan in 1747. In 1752 she married Pier Antonio Pinottini; the marriage remained childless. Her salon was open to musicians and important personalities: in 1770, W. A. Mozart and his father attended a soirée at the Pinottini residence during their first sojourn in Milan.
Other operas by Agnesi Pinottini included Ciro in Armenia , premiered in 1753 at the Teatro Ducale in Milan, and Sofonisba (Naples, 1765). Insubria consolata was likewise premiered in Milan, in honour of Beatrice d’Este and Archduke Ferdinand in 1766.
Ulisse in Campania is subtitled "serenata", but in fact it is a full-length work with a libretto written by Agnesi Pinottini herself. This work is an example of the composer’s recurring connections with Austria. She wrote the opera in 1768 on the occasion of the marriage of King Ferdinand of Naples and Princess Maria Karolina, one of the daughters of Empress Maria Theresia. Agnesi Pinottini also composed a setting of Metastasio’s libretto Il re pastore , a libretto which was also used by Mozart in 1775. She wrote a total of seven operas, using her own librettos for three of them, and also composed chamber music and lieder. Several arias were dedicated to Empress Maria Theresia, who is said to have sung them frequently.
The present production has the goal of initiating a rediscovery of this highly talented composer who has been forgotten for centuries. The picturesque baroque Schlosstheater Schönbrunn represents the ideal setting for this work.
Sarastros Traum von der Zauberflöte - gekürzt
Idea & Realisation
Holger Bleck, Wiener Kammeroper
Music
Version for chamber opera after W. A. Mozart
Instrumentation
Wolfgang Liebhart
Text
Emanuel Schikaneder
Text Arrangement and Director
Gabriel Barylli
Conductor
Daniel Hoyem-Cavazza
Stage Design and Costumes
Thomas Goerge
Lighting
Lukas Kaltenbäck
Soloists
Claudia Camie (Queen of the Night), Judith Halász (Pamina),
Bryan Rothfuss (Papageno), Thomas Tischler (Tamino),
Arno Weinländer (Sarastro), and others
Orchestra
Orchester der Wiener Kammeroper
World Premiere
15.12.2005
Repeat Performances during Wiener Opernsommer
21.07.2006
Place
Wiener Kammeroper
Tickets & Info
Wiener Kammeroper,
Fleischmarkt 24, 1010 Vienna
Phone: +43-1-512 01 00?77
E-mail: ticket@wienerkammeroper.at
Web
www.wienerkammeroper.at looks at The Magic Flute from a different perspective. The new arrangement comes about through deletions, changes in the musical sequence, and a reduction of the instrumentation to a chamber ensemble.
This opera project examines The Magic Flute from a different perspective. The ingenious arrangement comes about through deletions, changes in the sequence of the arias, and the reduction of the instrumentation to a chamber ensemble.
"What if one were to say that there was once peace between the most embittered enemies? And love? What if someone were to say that every love must undergo a test in order to find out what steadfastness really means? The greatest test consists of a question to which the knowing spirit cannot find an answer. The cruelty of a separation without cause is the core of that incomprehensible thing we call fate. The moment when thought despairs is the moment when we begin to acquire a sense of true devotion. A sense of the infinite. A sense that wisdom is experienced only when the ego capitulates. ‘Silence’, the greatest of all tests, demands that we surrender the battle for power. ‘Forgiveness’ is the destination on the road which eschews revenge. What if we were to say that love must undergo an ordeal by fire - the test of closeness - and an ordeal by water - the test of loneliness - in order to acquire depth? What if Sarastro were to reach out to his wife in love - and she were to forgo revenge? It would be Sarastro’s Dream ." (Gabriel Barylli)
"True to the tradition of the house concerts which Schönberg initiated as part of his ‘private musical performances’, the Carinthian-born Austrian composer Wolfgang Liebhart, who studied composition with Francis Burt at the Vienna Musikhochschule (now University of Music and Performing Arts) and later with Jonathan Harvey at the University of Sussex in Brighton, did not change the musical substance of the opera. Everything is pure Mozart; the score does not contain a single original note by Liebhart. All he did was to reduce the orchestra to a necessary minimum." (Holger Bleck)
Gabriel Barylli adapted the storyline of the Chamber Opera The Magic Flute , reducing and compressing the libretto to illuminate the nature of the Magic Flute from a different perspective. The writer, actor and director Gabriel Barylli was born in Vienna in 1957. He trained as an actor at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. Subsequently he played at the Burgtheater in Vienna, the Schillertheater in Berlin, the Salzburg Festival and the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna. In 1980, Gabriel Barylli made his cinema debut in the title role of Der Schüler Gerber , based on a novel by Friedrich Torberg. Barylli began writing in the mid-1980s.
"The present score is not another arrangement of Mozart’s The Magic Flute . Sarastro’s Dream is based on the libretto by Schikaneder, but the sequence of events has been changed and the cast reduced to eight protagonists. Based on Gabriel Barylli’s alternative to Mozart’s original, Liebhart’s instrumentation was developed for a chamber ensemble consisting of a maximum of eleven musicians. With two exceptions (harmonium and vibraphone), all the instruments of the ensemble can be found in a classical Mozart orchestra.
Liebhart’s main priority was not to imitate the sound of Mozart, but to do justice to the spirit of his music. His sources were various Mozart editions, piano reductions and secondary literature. The articulation, dynamics and accidentals were sometimes supplemented in corresponding passages. To give the singers the greatest possible freedom of interpretation in their roles, almost all the dynamic markings were omitted from the vocal parts. Sarastro’s Dream is a concentrated chamber work designed for small and medium-sized stages. The reduction of its cast to the key figures makes it particularly suitable for young and very young opera fans." (Wolfgang Liebhart)
Ultimately, what remains is still The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but in a modified form: a chamber opera, a Magic Flute - abridged .
Die Weberischen - A Ballad (working title)
Realisation
Vereinigte Bühnen Wien
Music
Martyn Jacques, Christian Kolonovits
Text
Felix Mitterer
Conductor
Christian Kolonovits
Director
Stephanie Mohr
Stage Design
Miriam Busch
Costumes
Alfred Mayerhofer
Lighting
Nicole Berry
Sounddesign
Martin Mayer, Claus Bühler (Sounddesign Tiger Lillies)
Artists
Martyn Jacques/Tiger Lillies, Ruth Brauer (Sofie), Eva Maria Marold (Josefa), Robert Meyer (Cilly), Tanja Schleiff (Konstanze), Anne Weber (Aloisia)
Orchestra
Orchester der Vereinigten Bühnen Wien
Premiere
28.08.2006
Dates
until 21.09.06 every day except Monday
Place
Halle E im MuseumsQuartier,
Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna
www.halleneg.at
Tickets
Wien Ticket, Phone: +43-1-58 885, www.wien-ticket.at
Infocenter WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006, Phone: +43-1-58999
Web
www.musicalvienna.at
For information about the MuseumsQuartier Wien, please see:
www.mqw.at The leader of the cult band "Tiger Lillies", Martyn Jacques, wrote the music to Felix Mitterer’s script commissioned by WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006. The leader of the cult band "Tiger Lillies", Martyn Jacques, wrote the music to Felix Mitterer`s script commissioned by WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006. The result is a black-comedy musical of English/Austrian provenance: Die Weberischen - Mozart`s life told from the perspective of the Weber women.
Enter - no, not Mozart! Not a man! And heaven knows, the Weber women - Aloysia, Constanze and Sophie) - went through enough men in their time! While the street ballad is begun by a certain Mr. Schikaneder, his falsetto voice suggests that he might swiftly reveal himself to be yet another woman. And while there are other men in the story apart from him - Webers, Langes, Nissens, dukes and rakes, to say nothing of two Mozart boys - none of them actually enter the field, which remains firmly in the hands of this squadron of women about whom Felix Mitterer’s ballad tells its tale. Apart from intermittent pregnancies - some of which just happen, sometimes are planned, and on occasion are deliberately terminated - the five women always have the upper hand; although they squabble tempestuously among themselves, they always retain some sort of advantage over the men.
Starting in 1778, when Mozart fell into their clutches in Mannheim at the age of twenty-two, the Weber women remained in his vicinity, humiliating and admiring him by turns, competing for his attention, singing his compositions (or marketing them in other ways), and repeatedly exploiting him. Each of the daughters did so according to her own nature - the overly loving Sophie, the diva Aloysia, lazy Constanze who was unable to rouse herself to do anything, and Josepha, the only workhorse in the stable of the money-grubbing Cilly.
All five went down in history because of Mozart. Whether they bore his children or created his operatic roles, whether they squandered his money or lent him some of their own (this, too, sometimes occurred!), after Mozart broke with Salzburg and bade his father Leopold goodbye, the Weber women became his family. However, he always remained on the outside looking in, while the Weber women arranged things among themselves. Mozart (as we said) does not make an appearance in this play - except as a corpse lying on the stage: the message is that the Weber women care for him, inherit from him, love him, and destroy him.
The exceptional British band "Tiger Lillies", together with a large orchestra and five actresses with excellent singing voices, provides the music for this reminiscence about Mozart. The band’s lead singer Martyn Jacques performs the songs, including Schikaneder’s ballad in falsetto, and also composed the music for the production together with Christian Kolonovits.
Felix Mitterer is one of Austria’s leading authors. He was born in 1948 in Achenkirch in Tyrol and grew up as the adopted child of farm labourer parents. In the early 1960s he studied at the teachers’ training academy in Innsbruck and then worked for ten years at the Innsbruck customs office. In 1970/1971, his writings began to be aired on the radio and published in newspapers and literary magazines. Felix Mitterer moved to Ireland in 1995. He is the author of many well-known plays, scripts, radio plays and children’s stories. In his first play, Kein Platz für Idioten (No Room for Idiots) , Mitterer himself played the leading role. Since then he has repeatedly made appearances as an actor in addition to his literary work.
"Felix Mitterer persistently deals with controversial themes. Nazism, homosexuality, terrorism, handicapped people ? his works always expose repressed and unacknowledged problems, thereby creating space for criticism", was one of the comments of the jury that awarded him the Ernst Toller literature prize in 2001. Most recently, Mitterer received the Prix Italia 2004 for his radio play Die Beichte (The Confession) .
Martyn Jacques, the founder of the "Tiger Lillies", grew up in the seamy London district of Soho. His songs describe prostitutes, drug addicts and other losers. Jacques also wrote the music for Shockheaded Peter , and he received the prestigious Olivier award for his achievements as a theatre musician.
Magic Flute 06
Production
NEUE OPER WIEN
Music
Thomas Pernes
Text
Gloria G. & Thomas Pernes
Conductor
Walter Kobéra
Director
Andreas Leisner
Stage Design and Costumes
Walter Schütze
Lighting Design
Norbert Chmel
Dramaturgy
Alexandra Noël
Soloists
Maria Droulou, Steven Gallop, Petra Halper-König, Alexander Kaimbacher, Maida Karisik, Gerhard Karzel, Dieter Kschwendt-Michel, Rebecca Nelsen, Mamuka Nikolaishvili
Orchestra
amadeus ensemble-wien
Chorus
Chor der Neuen Oper Wien
Chorus Direction
Michael Grohotolsky
World Premiere
19.03.2006, 19:30
Dates
29., 30. & 31.03.2006, 19:30
Place
Halle E im MuseumsQuartier,
Museumsplatz 1, 1070
Vienna
www.halleneg.at
Tickets & Info
Neue Oper Wien
www.neueoperwien.at
Phone: +43-1-218 25 67
Wien Ticket,
Phone: +43-1-588 85
www.wien-ticket.at
Web
www.neueoperwien.at
For information about the MuseumsQuartier Wien, please see:
www.mqw.at by Thomas Pernes, is a NEW Magic Flute , in which the figures of the Mozart opera act in a new and different piece.
A young man collapses at a crossroads in his life. As he flees from one world, another world is revealed to him in the moment of his breakdown, a world that initially seems to be a dream ? but that becomes ever more real until the borders between fiction and reality vanish completely. In this twilight state, he gets to know the bright and dark sides of existence and acknowledges the dark depths of his own soul. Fairytale figures emerge out of the forms surrounding him, and the more he falls under the spell of these visions, the more his journey of self-discovery becomes a nightmare.
The wonderful dreamworld in which the young man, whose name is Tamino, begins this journey of self-discovery soon develops into an outright horror trip. The luminous figure of Sarastro, at first glance sublime and benevolent, suddenly appears to be a pathological megalomaniac on a mission to improve the world. The perversion of humanist ideals becomes a threat to our society and an existential danger for every individual.
The opera Magic Flute 06 by composer Thomas Pernes and author Gloria G. acts like a burning glass. Armed with knowledge of the past, it fixes attention on the present, in which it exposes personal and social disintegration beneath the bright and sparkling surface. The result is an inferno, an ordeal by fire for Tamino’s soul and for human values. It is an attempt at analysis which focuses substantially on mutations of the known and the familiar. Who is behind the figure of Sarastro today; who could be a Queen of the Night today? This play on the popular figures of Schikaneder’s suburban extravaganza reveals unexpected links with our own environment. From a thousand different potential viewpoints, it selects a contemporary and highly pointed perspective. Magic Flute 06 develops this approach, which begins playfully and innocuously, uncompromisingly to its conclusion. In the catastrophe of the ordeals by fire and water in the present, in the further development of the original material, a kernel is found that just might be a shimmer of hope for the future.
The links between the reception of the past, the view of the present, and the vision of the future are reflected in the composition: "We have Magic Flute in the back of our minds from childhood onwards. We have to deal with that," says Pernes. For him, the connection with Mozart’s Magic Flute is exemplified by the reference to the chasm which has opened up between Mozart as a historical figure and the present day. A study of the past offers an opportunity for repositioning oneself and at the same time the fantastic opportunity, with this backup, to take a look into the future.
For Pernes, the emotional level is essential. The music and the libretto blend into each other, and the musical dramaturgy is the decisive factor in this drama. The connections with Mozart result from the attitude which Pernes expresses towards Mozart in music. Without denying the achievements of New Music, he creates interfaces with Mozart’s musical language. Along with his deep respect for Mozart, what is crucial for Pernes is intuition - the internal, self-governing logic of the language of music.
Director Andreas Leisner and set designer Walter Schütze make their production revolve around two primary issues: the problem of the individual who can no longer relate to his social environment, and the perverted pseudo-humanism of today’s elite leaders. In the process, they touch on the theme of globalisation and on this opera’s inherent gender conflict. In reducing everything to its essence, they focus on the fundamental questions posed by Magic Flute 06 : the questions of human values and their importance in the present day. Like the music, the staging plays with the audience’s expectations and obscures the borders between the real world and the stage.
Don Juan wird Sechzig (Don Juan Turns 60)
Don Juan has many faces. The Austrian composer Dirk D’Ase and the Viennese poet Robert Schindel decided to examine them in Don Juan Turns 60 .
Don Juan has many faces. The Antwerp-born Austrian composer Dirk D’Ase and the Viennese poet Robert Schindel decided to examine these different faces in their commissioned work for WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006. The combination of Schindel’s creative poetic language and D’Ase’s highly emotional and colourful music promises to make for an exciting opera. For D’Ase’s sixth full-length opera, the composer found a like-minded librettist in Robert Schindel - who has done a brilliant job of creating a Don Juan of the present day.
Joschi Herzog, a man who inherited a fortune, lapses into a deep fit of melancholy in the face of his approaching 60th birthday. The many women he has loved all seem to have vanished. His friend Konstantin suggests that he should once again seduce the three most important women in his life. The woman with whom he is most successful will be the one with whom he should grow old in peace and contentment.
Juli is the first woman Herzog chooses. In Paris in the age of existentialism, they encounter Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. With Katharina and Deborah, too, he travels to periods in time which were subsequently regarded as historical. After these time travels, Herzog once again sits in his armchair and curses his life. At that point, the doorbell rings and a wonderful woman appears. She, Maja, is the perfect combination of Juli, Katharina, and Deborah. Overjoyed, they sink into each other’s arms. The birthday guests arrive and find him dead with his champagne glass in his hand.
Don Juan wird sechzig (Don Juan Turns 60) is the story of a man who does not know how to grow old. It is a master-stroke of the devil’s devising that a man who was present in person at the crucial paradigm shifts of the 20th century was incapable of understanding himself or his time. Did the fault lie with his inherited fortune or with the impenetrability of the Don Juanesque character?
"Everything I write, I find in real life," is Dirk D’Ase’s artistic credo. This is apparent not only in the key elements of his instrumental music, but also in the personal and interpersonal conflicts that D’Ase deals with in his operas. In his view, the world, human beings, and life itself are all based on emotions that must be acknowledged. He is interested in direct and immediate communication: going straight for the jugular and being on the receiving end of the same.
In his music, Dirk D’Ase focuses on the special characteristics and tone colours of the different musical instruments and the human voice. He develops subtle, characterising, free-tonal vocal and instrumental lines which clearly and neatly combine large intervallic leaps with tone repetitions. D’Ase has developed his own rhythmic technique which has become a trademark of his compositions. It is founded on the basic principle of traditional African music. He was inspired to develop this technique by his field research during extended trips to Africa. In concerts by African musicians - from traditional music to township music - D’Ase discovered excellent practical examples of spontaneous, inspired and inspiring music-making. From a technical point of view, it was chiefly the interlinked structures of the so-called "inherent patterns" which he incorporated into his own music: complex rhythms which cause the listener to perceive note patterns that differ from the sequence of notes actually played. D’Ase uses the same technique in his work with tone colours, blending individual melodies to form a new virtual sound gestalt. D’Ase frequently works with small note values that give his music a highly-charged quality and dense texture, but these passages are always contrasted with slow cantilenas. Tempo and density, combined with the drawn-out tension created by the dramaturgy of his subject matter, are the defining characteristics of D’Ase’s musical works.
Odio Mozart / I Hate Mozart
Idea
Michael Sturminger
Realisation
Theater an der Wien and WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006
Music
Bernhard Lang
Text and Director
Michael Sturminger
Stage and Costume Design
Renate Martin & Andreas Donhauser
Conductor
Johannes Kalitzke
Orchestra
Klangforum Wien
Soloists
Salome Kammer, Florian Boesch and others
World Premiere
08.11.2006
Place
Theater an der Wien,
Linke Wienzeile 6, 1060 Vienna
Tickets & Info
Wien Ticket,
Phone: +43-1-588 85,
www.wien-ticket.at
Web
www.theater-wien.at
www.wienmozart2006.at A full-length musical dealing with Mozart, his music and his character, by Michael Sturminger und Bernhard Lang.
Michael Sturminger’s and Bernhard Lang’s I Hate Mozart , a work commissioned by WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006, is a full-length opera which deals with Mozart, his music, and his character.
This turbulent romp centres around a young, highly gifted conductor who uses a combination of charm and ambition to create for himself the image of a successful genius and furthers his career with an iron will. His newest project is an opera by Mozart. His wife, his agent, the singers and musicians with whom he works, as well as critics, theatre directors and politicians are involved in a colourful chaos of love and infidelity, jealousy and betrayal. The encounters are charged with personal power games and intrigues, but there are also sentimental moments in which emotions run deep. The protagonists’ personal involvement with Mozart’s music becomes the mirror of their struggles with life. In the different places where they work on Mozart’s music - from the main stage to the theatre cafeteria, from the office to the director’s bedroom, from the orchestra rehearsal room to the pedestrian zone outside - the protagonists suffer through one another and through Mozart’s music, although the music also becomes a source of comfort.
At the heart of this production lies its protagonists’ almost inevitable failure to do justice to Mozart. This failure results in outbursts of anger and resignation, depression and despair, but ultimately the evening’s message is that Mozart and his music remain related to human beings with all their imperfections. Thus even failure is frequently connected with a comforting and ultimately happy experience of Mozart.
This work, which is being staged as a new production at the Theater an der Wien, consists of a succession of associatively linked scenes which represent a modern approach to Mozart and which depict personal growth against the yardstick of the unattainable genius of the role model. The music of Mozart, and specifically his arias, ensembles and instrumental works, serve as a basis for a departure into the electronic, computer-generated soundscapes of Bernhard Lang. However, Lang also uses a twenty-piece orchestra which produces the classical sound of a Mozart ensemble while also meeting the demands of contemporary compositional techniques, as well as a stage ensemble of singers and actors.
In looking behind the scenes of an opera house, Viennese librettist/director Michael Sturminger and Linz-born composer Bernhard Lang ironically reveal the failure of performers to meet the demands of Mozart’s music. Although emotions are constantly being instrumentalised and simulated both on the stage and off it, the difference between reality and cliché never becomes clear. Thus the evening allows the audience to experience the special significance of Mozart for music and life in the present day in a humorous and ironic, but also earnest way. The simultaneity of depth and lightness, of vibrant joie de vivre and suffering, makes the study of Mozart’s work a challenge that is at the same time a joyous experience and an impossible task. I Hate Mozart breathes new life into the ancient device of theatre within theatre.
Bernhard Lang received his early musical training in Linz and studied philosophy, German language and literature, piano, and composition in Graz. In 1999 he moved to Vienna, where he works as a freelance composer. Lang has held a professorship in composition at the Graz University of Music and Dramatic Arts since 2003.
The librettist and director Michael Sturminger studied scriptwriting, dramaturgy and directing at the Vienna Film School. Since 1990 he has worked as a writer and director for cinema and theatre, with engagements at such establishments as the Vienna Volksoper and the Zurich Opera House.
Tanz Atelier Wien
Music
W. A. Mozart
Choreography
Sebastian Prantl
Artists
Vienna Boys’ Choir, Cecilia Li (piano)
Ensemble
Ensemble TAW
Dates
09. & 16.03.2006, 19:30
Place
Lange Kasematte im Wiener Palais Coburg
Coburgbastei 4, 1010 Vienna
Tickets
Phone: +43-1-522 60 44
E-mail: office@tanzatelierwien.at
Web
www.palais-coburg.com
www.wsk.at
www.tanzatelierwien.at
www.cecilia-li.com Sebastian Prantl (choreographer), the dance ensemble Tanz Atelier Wien, Cecilia Li (concert pianist) and the
Vienna Boys’ Choir combine musical and spatial elements. Sebastian Prantl (choreographer), the dance ensemble Tanz Atelier Wien, Cecilia Li (concert pianist) and the
Vienna Boys’ Choir combine musical and spatial elements.
The "Long Casemate" in Palais Coburg in Vienna is one of the city’s few surviving renaissance fortifications. In "Spazio Divertimento", this fascinating spatial arrangement in Coburg Palace is manifested in the choreographic structures created by Sebastian Prantl combined with the peerless sound of the Vienna Boys’ Choir and the atmospheric body language of the Tanz Atelier Wien ensemble.
The musical and dramaturgical concept of virtuoso pianist Cecilia Li links choral leitmotifs with solo theatrical events. The formation of the Vienna Boys’ Choir is set in motion during the course of the performance and thus integrated into the overall dramaturgical concept. The result is a theatrical event in two parts (9 and 16 March 2006) which promises to be a unique artistic experience.
Sebastian Prantl is one of the key protagonists of Austria’s free dance scene. His awards include the European Culture Prize in 1996 and the first Austrian dance production prize in 1997. Internationally, too, he ranks at the forefront of the dance world (Beijing Art Festival, Taipei Opera House, Amsterdam School of Dance, University College of Dance in Stockholm, etc.)
Entführung aus dem Serail auf türkisch
Organisation
Schauspielhaus Wien
Music
W. A. Mozart
Musical direction / adaptation / translation
Serdar Yalçin
Stage direction
Ibrahim Quraishi
Stage design
Stefanie Wilhelm
Costumes
Aziz
Dramaturgy
Gabriel Smeets
New version of the libretto
brahim Quraishi, Gabriel Smeets
Video design
Marc Perroud aka tz?d
Coaching
Hiroyo Masumura
Ensemble
Serap Gögüs, Çigdem Soyarslan, Görkem Ezgi Yildirim, Michael Doumas, Erdem Erdogan, Ali Murat Erengül, Martin Niedermair
Orchestra
Conductor/Pino: Serdar Yalçin / Martin Fuchsberger
1st Kanun: Didem Basar Dermen
2nd Kanun: Güniz Yilmaz
Kemançe: Binnaz Çelik
Oud: Eren Özek
Clarinet: Turgut Aktas
Premiere
19. September 2006
Dates
Exery day except for Monday, until 1.11.2006.
No performances between 4.10. and 7.10.2006.
Place
Schauspielhaus Wien
Tickets & Info
Schauspielhaus Wien GmbH, Porzellang. 19, 1090 Vienna
Phone: +43-1-317 01 01-18
E-mail: welcome@schauspielhaus.at
Web
www.schauspielhaus.at
The production Saray , a comprehensive new version of Mozart’s singspiel The Abduction from the Seraglio , will be staged at the Schauspielhaus as part of WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006. This production continues the series of operatic reinterpretations at the Schau
spielhaus, which began with Poppea and Hoffmanns Erzählungen .
Created for an ensemble of outstanding Turkish singers and musicians, Saray is not only about love, intrigue and the inevitable happy ending. This reinterpretation of Mozart’s opera, played on Turkish instruments and incorporating role reversals, addresses the issue of the clash of two cultures. At the same time, it provides scope for examining the centuries-old relationship between Vienna and Istanbul and the structures of Western and Islamic religions and societies. Using Mozart’s singspiel as a starting-point, the production develops a theatrical form that combines opera, singspiel, musical theatre, satire, tragedy and modern soap opera. The music forms a bridge between past and present. Thus Seraglio - Saray transcends boundaries and opens doors, allowing a new audience to take a dispassionate look at the reality of a multicultural society with all its inherent challenges.
Coffee was brought to Vienna by the Turks, and even apple strudel ultimately originated with Austria’s former besiegers. Today, the Turkish community represents Vienna’s largest non-Austrian ethnic group. So what could be more appropriate right here and now than an opera which is set in a Turkish brothel?
Serdar Yalçın was commissioned to create the musical arrangement and the Turkish translation, and also conducts the performance. In addition to working as a conductor and libretto translator at the Istanbul opera house, he is also well-known in the Turkish music world as a composer and arranger. The production is directed by the Pakistan-born stage director and multimedia artist Ibrahim Quraishi. As the artistic director of Faim de Siecle, he works regularly in Europe, the USA and Asia.
Requiem for Piccoletto
Produced by
NEUE OPER WIEN
Music
Dieter Kaufmann
Text
Josef Winkler
Conductor
Walter Kobéra
Stage Direction and Stage Design
Alexander Kubelka
Choreography
Bert Gstettner
Costumes
Devi Saha
Lighting
Norbert Chmel
Dramaturgy
Alexandra Noël
Orchestra
amadeus ensemble-wien
Artists
Elena Denisova (solo violin), Jowita Sip (soprano), Gunda König (narrator), Manuel Rubey (narrator)
Tanz*Hotel - Peter Beil, Udo Kawasser, Julio Lepe, Ina Rager (dancers)
Vocal Ensemble
Agnes Scheibelreiter, Tamara Gallo, Elena Suvorova, Elisabeth Lang, Roman Payer, Gernot Heinrich, Thomas Weinhappel, Michael Schwendinger
Rehearsals
Michael Grohotolsky
World Premiere
28.03.2006, 19:30
Dates
01. & 02.04.2006, 19:30 (The performance on 03.04. has been cancelled)
Place
Halle E im MuseumsQuartier,
Museumsplatz 1, 1070
Vienna
www.halleneg.at
Tickets & Info
Neue Oper Wien
Phone: +43-1-218 25 67
www.neueoperwien.at
Wien Ticket,
Phone: +43-1-588 85
www.wien-ticket.at
Web
www.neueoperwien.at
For information about the MuseumsQuartier Wien, please see:
www.mqw.at Opera in words - drama - dance - images Requiem für Piccoletto is new music theatre, an exploration of the function and form of opera in our time. Seen from a great distance, the Earth looks like a globe, its surface like a map. As we come closer, we begin to perceive life, the city, the market, St. Peter’s Square: Rome. In its midst stands Piccoletto, the adolescent market boy, surrounded by all the "dead nature" that is offered there for sale: natura morta - slaughtered, torn-out nature, a variegated hodge-podge that appeals to all the senses in its colourful diversity.
In his novella Natura Morta , Josef Winkler creates, through a flood of images and actions, a colossal "word painting", an authentic reproduction of human existence. As though watching through the lens of a camera, he tells of the multilateral and ambivalent goings-on in the streets of Rome and thereby creates the basis for a compelling evening of opera which passes through emotional vicissitudes that reach as far as the blackest depths of human existence. Winkler’s text constantly collects observations, gives them permanence in sentences overflowing with sensuality, and sculpts "life itself" out of language. He describes human nature with tenderness and sensitivity as well as with horrifying overstatement, flamboyant as a baroque still life.
The hero of this opera is not early-ripened genius, not the old man who finally lets go of the key to the city - this is a memorial created for the unknown young man. The story takes an unexpected twist and turns the insignificant into the unfinished, the subject of desire into an object of pity. He himself becomes "natura morta".
The opera Requiem für Piccoletto by Dieter Kaufmann, who took
Winkler’s original text as the basis of his composition, is an attempt to reproduce the "as-is" state of a society and the reactions of the individual to this state. A migration through fish offal, blood, dirty water, ox brains, butcher’s knives, filth and rubbish leads us to people on the social periphery. But Natura Morta has no continuous plane of action. It becomes obvious - because he makes so many appearances - that only Piccoletto, the son of the fig-seller, who two-thirds of the way through Winkler’s text is run over by a fire engine, is the only figure that is special among all the others.
The opera approaches Josef Winkler’s Roman novella - which Marcel Reich-Ranicki enthusiastically described as "a great poetic étude on the transience of existence, a very sensual book" - as if through a telescope from outer space. But Winkler’s opera text goes beyond the Roman novella. In a six-part invocation of the "Holy Father" he continues the critical references to the present-day role of the Catholic Church which were hinted at in the Gloria of the second part of the composition, and in an epilogue the dead Piccoletto, looking down from Heaven as it were, settles accounts with his parents’ past. In both places the point being made is the dubiousness of hierarchies. In the music, too, which is composed for speakers, 9 vocalists, 18 instrumentalists, dancers, films and electroacoustics, lies an interplay of grief and desire, sense and sensuality.
In the staging by Alexander Kubelka, the dead Piccoletto "appears" at the beginning of the opera to a blind girl in her living room. Kubelka’s freely invented framework story lets a "relationship" develop between the blind girl and the narrator Piccoletto. Piccoletto’s narrations trigger fantasies in the girl which become "reality" in her living room. Kubelka contrasts greed, lust, terror and the Vatican with an imaginary and fantastic love story between the deeply religious girl and the tender, sensual Piccoletto. What arises is a whole range of tensions and images that run the gamut from dreamlike polymorphism to realistic reduction. An opera evening filled with the love of life in the presence of death.
Weigl, Joseph: Die Schweizer Familie
Idea and Organisation
Till Gerrit Waidelich, Uri Rom
Music
Joseph Weigl
Text
Ignaz Franz Castelli
Conductor
Uri Rom
Director
Kristina Leopold
Dramaturgy and Research Consultant
Till Gerrit Waidelich
Stage Design
Elena Peytchinska, Stephanie Rauch
Costumes
Mascha Schubert, Mareike Wulff
Lighting
Jan Lukas
Make-Up Artist
Manuela Kroke
Production Management
Sören Mund
Artists
Marília Vargas, Julia Baumeister, Olivia Vermeulen, Roman Payer, Robert Maszl, Petri Mikael Pöyhönen, Tobias Müller-Kopp, Stephan Bootz
Orchestra
with musicians from Austria, Germany and Switzerland
Premiere
03.09.2004
Place
Schlosstheater Schönbrunn, Schloss Schönbrunn, 1130 Vienna
Web
www.dieschweizerfamilie.net Joseph Weigl’s Die Schweizer Familie , one of the most popular operas of the early 19th century, saw a revival in Vienna in 2004 - an early harbinger of WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006, as it were.
On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, in 2006, there has been a resurgence of interest in the nature of the milieu in which Mozart worked, the people with whom he collaborated, and the younger composers in his immediate environment on whom he exercised a lasting influence. Apart from Mozart’s own students, a composer who has attracted attention is a man from Eisenstadt in Burgenland, a godson of Joseph Haydn, who was ten years Mozart’s junior and was later to become one of the most famous opera composers of his time. The composer’s name was Joseph Weigl.
Die Schweizer Familie, which was written by Weigl to a libretto by Ignaz Franz Castelli, was premiered at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna on 14 March 1809. Translated versions of the opera were performed all over Europe. It was revived in Vienna, Zurich and Berlin in the autumn of 2004 and remained a lasting success during the first half of the 19th century.
As a Singspiel with musical pieces and spoken dialogue, it was the most popular German opera apart from The Magic Flute and Der Frei-schütz before the dawn of German Romantic opera.
Pantalon and Columbine
Realisation
Theater Forum Schwechat
Music Fragments
W. A. Mozart
Musical Reconstruction, Prologue and Epilogue (commissioned works)
Johannes Holik
Reconstruction of the Libretto, Staging
Milan Sladek
Conductor
Georg Kugi
Sets & Costumes
Jan Kocman
Ensemble
Ensemble Neue Streicher, Klosterneuburg
Pantomime Artists
Juraj Bencik (Dottore), Olinka Feldekova (Columbine), Markus Kofler (Pantalon), and others
Premiere
27.06.2006, 20:00, Jugendstiltheater (world premiere)
31.08.2006, 20:00, Rothmühle (open air premiere)
Dates
28.06. - 01.07.2006, 20:00 Jugendstiltheater
01., 02., 06., 07., 08., 09., 13., 14., 15.09.2006, 20:00 Rothmühle
Places
Jugendstiltheater, Baumgartner Höhe 1, 1140 Vienna
Schloss Rothmühle (Schwechat/Rannersdorf), Rothmühlstr. 5, 2320 Schwechat
Tickets & Info
Theater Forum Schwechat, Ehrenbrunng. 24, 2320 Schwechat
Phone: +43-1-707 82 72
E-mail:
karten@forumschwechat.com
Web
www.forumschwechat.com
www.mozartpantomime.at
www.jugendstiltheater.co.at
In 1783, Mozart composed the music for the pantomime Pantalon und Columbine, in which he himself played Harlequin. Nothing survives of this work except one first-violin part. Almost all the storyline has been lost.
In 1783, Mozart composed the music for the pantomime Pantalon and Columbine , in which he himself played Harlequin. Nothing survives of this work except one first-violin part. Almost all the storyline has been lost.
The composer Johannes Holik has now embarked on the task of reconstructing the music for Pantalon and Columbine . He has replaced missing sections with other fragments by Mozart and composed a new Prologue and Epilogue, commissioned by WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006, to serve as the music for the framework story which transports the modern audience into the world of pantomime in Mozart’s day. Milan Sladek has undertaken to reconstruct the scenario of the pantomime and is the producer of this performance by an international pantomime ensemble.
Columbine and Harlequin are lovers. Their marriage is opposed by Columbine’s father, Pantalon, and by the Doctor, who wants to marry Columbine himself and whom Pantalon believes to be the better match. But Columbine, of course, is determined to oppose her father’s wishes ?
Theater an der Wien
Address
Theater an der Wien,
Linke Wienzeile 6,
1060 Vienna
Tickets
Wien Ticket,
Phone: +43-1-588 85,
www.wien-ticket.at
Info
Theater an der Wien,
Phone: +43-1-58830-660
Web
www.theater-wien.at
Coinciding with the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in January 2006, the Theater an der Wien was inaugurated as a new opera house in Vienna.
Coinciding with the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in January 2006, the Theater an der Wien was inaugurated as a new opera house in Vienna.
As a stagione opera house with year-round performances, the Theater an der Wien will represent a new, independent category at the high end of Vienna’s arts industry. The theatre will be open twelve months a year, with a premiere every month, and will present a stagione programme of operas. This means that the cast of each opera will remain unchanged from the first performance to the last, to ensure uniform quality at the highest international level.
This is not just any theatre - it is the theatre which Emanuel Schikaneder, the versatile genius, actor, organiser and, above all, librettist of The Magic Flute built, in the spirit of Mozart, in Vienna in 1801. On 8 January 2006, a new era began at the Theater an der Wien. Vienna’s new opera house was opened with a scintillating inaugural concert featuring such stars as Plácido Domingo, Thomas Quasthoff, Tzimon Barto and Julian Rachlin.
The Theater an der Wien has set itself the task of presenting representative examples of Mozart’s "immortal music" in the year 2006. Five of Mozart’s most important operas - Idomeneo, La clemenza di Tito, The Magic Flute, Cos? fan tutte and Don Giovanni - will be presented in exceptional new productions by Willy Decker, Christof Loy, Krystian Lupa, Patrice Chéreau and Keith Warner. With the renowned conductors Bertrand de Billy, Paolo Carignagni, Daniel Harding, Fabio Luisi and Seiji Ozawa, musical productions at the highest level of excellence are guaranteed.
In addition, international stars such as Sir Simon Rattle, Gidon Kremer, Thomas Hampson, Maurizio Pollini, Rudolf Buchbinder and others will give about 20 concerts, providing a cross-section of the instrumental œuvre of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The Requiem, choreographed by John Neumeier, will be performed in Vienna in a new musical production. And an extraordinary evening of dance, choreographed by Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and performed by her contemporary dance company ROSAS from Brussels, will reveal the possibilities of interaction between music (concert arias by Mozart) and dance.
While the Theater an der Wien has always had a firm commitment to history and to Mozart, the new opera house is also dedicated to contemporary music. This additional focus will be emphasised in the premiere of Bernard Lang’s I Hate Mozart on 8 November.
Wiener Staatsoper
Place
Vienna State Opera,
Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna
Tickets
Operng. 2, 1010 Vienna
Phone: +43-1-513 1 513 ( with credit card)
Info
Phone: +43-1-51444-7880 or Ext. -2250
Web
www.wiener-staatsoper.at
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s operas are among the pillars of the Vienna State Opera’s repertoire The opera house was inaugurated in 1869 with Mozart’s Don Juan . When, after the Second World War, the rebuilt house was reopened in 1955, the premiere of Don Giovanni was presented on the second day. Since then, some 2250 performances of Mozart operas have been given at the Vienna State Opera. The opera that has been most frequently played since 1955 is Le nozze di Figaro , which saw 656 performances up to the end of 2005. In the Mozart Year 2006, Le nozze di Figaro is again on the programme of the Vienna State Opera, together with two other operas with librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte: Don Giovanni and Cos? fan tutte .
On 27 January 2006, the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth will be celebrated with a matinee performance of The Magic Flute at the Vienna State Opera and with the premiere of Idomeneo, r? di Creta as a co-production at the Theater an der Wien in the evening. Neil Shicoff will perform the role of Idomeneo, with Seiji Ozawa conducting. Idamante will be sung by Angelika Kirchschlager, Ilia by Genia Kühmeier, and Elettra by Barbara Frittoli. The stage director is Willy Decker.
The second Mozart premiere of the jubilee year will be co-produced by the Vienna State Opera and the Burgtheater. On 1 May 2006, The Abduction from the Seraglio will be presented at the Burgtheater (the theatre where the opera was originally premiered) with Nicholas Ofczarek (Bassa Selim), Diana Damrau (Constanze), Franz Hawlata (Osmin) and Daniel Kirch (Belmonte). The production will be conducted by Philippe Jordan and directed by Karin Beier. (see page 41)
The Mozart jubilee will also be reflected in the programme of the mobilkom austria children’s opera tent on the roof terrace of the Vienna State Opera, where Bastien und Bastienne will open on 2 April 2006. The ballet of the Vienna State Opera and Volksoper will perform Wie es Euch gefällt by John Neumeier, with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at the Vienna State Opera during the jubilee year.
Music by Mozart will also dominate the opening programme of the Vienna Opera Ball on 23 February 2006, the 50th Opera Ball since the reopening of the opera house.
On 5 December 2006, the anniversary of the composer’s death, the Vienna State Opera will present Mozart’s last work, the Requiem, with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra under the baton of Christian Thielemann.
Volksoper Vienna
Address
Volksoper Wien, Währinger Str. 78, 1090 Vienna
Tickets
Phone: +43-1-513 1 513 (with credit card)
E-mail: tickets@volksoper.at
Info
Phone: +43-1-51444 3670
Web
www.volksoper.at
The Volksoper is famed as the most important Viennese stage for productions of Mozart’s operas in German.
The Volksoper is not only a time-honoured house of opera, operetta and musicals, but also the most important Viennese stage for productions of Mozart`s operas in German. Mozart`s works have been part of the theatre`s permanent repertoire since 1905.
The Magic Flute, for instance, is one of the most important "folk-oriented" operas of all time, and for this reason it will be performed at the Volksoper Wien in a new production by Helmuth Lohner starting in December 2005. In addition to this new production, the programme of the Volksoper in the Mozart Year 2006 includes over 40 performances of three other Mozart operas ? The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito ? as well as numerous special events.
Come and enjoy the following Mozart operas at the Volksoper Wien: The Magic Flute (in German, directed by Helmuth Lohner); The Marriage of Figaro (in German, directed by Marco Arturo Marelli); The Impresario (in German, with Helmuth Lohner as the Impresario); La clemenza di Tito (in Italian with German subtitles, directed by Nicolas Brieger); and Don Giovanni (in German, directed by Marco Arturo Marelli).
Leopold Hager, one of the world’s leading interpreters of Mozart, took up his post as chief conductor of the Volksoper Wien in the 2005/2006 season.
It was one hundred years earlier, in the season of 1905/1906, that the "Kaiserjubiläums-Stadttheater" switched from drama to music theatre. No sooner had this been accomplished than Mozart’s works laid claim to a permanent place in its repertoire, from Bastien und Bas-tienne through The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni to The Marriage of Figaro . The first opera production after World War II took place in the Volksoper, on 1 May 1945. It was Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro . Thus Mozart has always occupied a special place at the Volksoper. His works became one of the primary pillars of the repertoire under the directorship of Karl Dönch from 1973 onwards. During this period, The Marriage of Figaro , The Abduction from the Seraglio , The Magic Flute , Christian Boesch’s adaptation of The Magic Flute for children entitled "Zauber(flöten)reich Theater" and several ballet productions were performed in succession. The productions of the Da Ponte operas, Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro , from the time of Eberhard Waechter’s directorship (1987?1992), have remained in the repertoire to this day and are as popular as ever.
Vienna Festival 2006
The Magic Flute
Production
Wiener Festwochen
Co-Production
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Theater an der Wien in cooperation with WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, Wiener Festwochen
Music
W. A. Mozart
Conductor
Daniel Harding
Stage Director, Stage Design, Lighting
Krystian Lupa
Costumes
Piotr Skiba
Soloists
Olaf Bär, Malin Christensson, Andreas Conrad, Sabina Cvilak, Adrian Eröd, Tijl Faveyts, Lo?c Felix, Günther Groissböck, Helena Juntunen, Barbara Heising, Julia Oesch, Roman Sadnik, Christoph Strehl, Lúbica Vargicová
Orchestra
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Chorus
Arnold Schoenberg Chor
Premiere
13.05.2006, 19:00
Dates
15., 17., 19., 21.05.2006, 19:00
Place
Theater an der Wien
Zaide
Production
Wiener Festwochen
Co-Production
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, Barbican Centre, London
Music
W. A. Mozart
Conductor
Louis Langrée
Stage Direction
Peter Sellars
Stage Design
George Tsypin
Costumes
Gabriel Berry
Soloists
Terry Cook, Norman Shankle, Russell Thomas, Alfred Walker, Hyunah Yu
Orchestra
Camerata Salzburg
Chorus
Members of the University of Vienna Choir
Premiere
21.05.2006, 20:00
Dates
23., 25., 27.05.2006, 20:00
Place
Jugendstiltheater, Baumgartner Höhe 1, 1140 Vienna
Cos? fan tutte
Co-Production
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
Wiener Festwochen, Opéra National de Paris, Theater an der Wien in cooperation with WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006
Music
W. A. Mozart
Conductor
Daniel Harding
Stage Direction
Patrice Chéreau
Stage Design
Richard Peduzzi
Costumes
Caroline de Vivaise
Soloists
Stéphane Degout, Elina Garanc˘a, Shawn Mathey, Marie McLaughlin, Ruggero Raimondi, Erin Wall
Orchestra
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Chorus
Arnold Schoenberg Chor
Premiere
03.06.2006, 19:00
Dates
05., 07., 09., 11.06.2006, 19:00
Place
Theater an der Wien, Linke Wienzeile 6, 1060 Vienna
Tickets & Info
Festwochen-Service,
Phone: +43-1-589 22 22
Web
www.festwochen.at In 2006 the programme of the Vienna Festival will include the following Mozart operas: Lucio Silla, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and directed by Claus Guth, Die Zauberflöte and Cos? fan tutte at the Theater an der Wien, Zaide at the Jugendstiltheater.
The Wiener Festwochen 2005 included a prelude to the Mozart jubilee year: the highly acclaimed performance of Lucio Silla with the Concentus Musicus Vienna under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, staged by Claus Guth. In the Mozart Year 2006, three more Mozart operas will be included in the programme of the Wiener Festwochen: The Magic Flute and Cos? fan tutte at the Theater an der Wien, and Zaide at the Jugendstiltheater.
The premi?re of The Magic Flute during the Wiener Festwochen, under the musical direction of Daniel Harding, is the first opera to be
staged by the virtuoso theatre director Krystian Lupa from Poland: "I am looking forward to discovering, once again, the secret of this magical journey of the human soul, to defending the strange phenomenon of this musical parable - a child-like simplicity in harmony with the profoundest image of the human condition and of human desire, which, as it seems, amounts to one and the same thing ?"
Cos? fan tutte is, after Lucio Silla and Don Giovanni , the third Mozart opera directed by the internationally acclaimed French film, theatre and opera director Patrice Chéreau, and his first collaboration with Daniel Harding. "A calligrapher of the spirit of Mozart" wrote Die Zeit after the acclaimed premiere at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence: "With Chéreau there is only an empty space, the figures, the music, and the breathtaking mastery of a director who transforms sound and feelings into movement."
Peter Sellars is well known for taking innovative approaches in the realisation of classical works by integrating topical social and political issues. During the 1980s, the American star director achieved an international reputation, mainly with his staging of Mozart’s Da Ponte trilogy. To Sellars, Zaide is the "first piece about a Muslim country, a fascinating opera by a young man who wrote music about slaves at a time when they were not even considered to be human beings". In this production, Sellars will collaborate with the experienced Mozart conductor Louis Langrée.
Festival
"ZAUBERTAGE", Artistic Director Martin Walch
Music
Christian Muthspiel
Text
Manfred Karge (after Johann Nestroy)
Director
Hermann Beil
Conductor
Martin Walch & Christian Muthspiel
Actors
Therese Affolter & Manfred Karge
Ensemble
Merlin Ensemble Wien
Artists
Manfred Karge and others
World Premiere
14.07.2007, 21:00
Dates
15.07.2007, 21:00
Place
Courtyard of the castle Spitz
Spitz a.d. Donau
Info
Phone: +43-1-58 999
Web
www.wienmozart2006.at
www.christianmuthspiel.com A Mozartian Singspiel based on Nestroy, by Christian Muthspiel & Manfred Karge
The instrumentation of this work is similar to that of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale . The formal structure is reminiscent of Mozart’s The Magic Flute . The text is based on Nestroy’s The Talisman . Three very different stage works. And yet they all point in the same direction, creating a kind of fundamental biotope for the imagination during the compositional process.
Three popular fairy tales. Stories of magic. Scripts for the stage, written in the language of the people.
For a new composition, this framework suggests a multiplicity of possibilities for dealing with couplets, dialogues, recitatives, arias, and instrumental sections. Music and text can be linked in such a way that sounds and words give rise to each other in many different ways - from linear alternation through careful parallelisms to deliberate unisons.
The author of the text, the director and the musicians will collaborate closely to tell a contemporary tale. In a chamber work, with a small ensemble.
The Merlin Ensemble Wien headed by Martin Walch has already collaborated with Hermann Beil and Manfred Karge in many productions. After works like Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale and Wynton Marsalis’ The Fiddler’s Tale - this, too, transposed into the present day by means of a new text by Manfred Karge - the idea was born for a new joint work, to be composed by Christian Muthspiel. The composition will be created in 2006 and premiered in 2007.
Realisation
Marionettentheater Schloss Schönbrunn
Management: Christine Hierzer, Werner Hierzer
Music
W. A. Mozart
Libretto
Emanuel Schikaneder
Director
Gerhard Tötschinger
Stage and Costume Design
Erika Schmitzer-Ebner, Werner Hierzer
Lighting
Werner Hierzer
Sound
Euroacoustics, Walter Till
Artists
Ensemble of the Marionettentheater Schloss Schönbrunn
Dates
January - March: Sat 19:00, Sun 16:00
April - October: Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat 19:00, Sun 16:00
November - December: Sat 19:00, Sun 16:00
Place
Marionettentheater Schloss Schönbrunn,
Schloss Schönbrunn, Hofratstrakt, 1130 Vienna
Tickets
Phone: +43-1-817 32 47
E-mail: office@marionettentheater.at
Web
www.marionettentheater.at Opera by W. A. Mozart - version for marionette theatre
The award-winning Marionettentheater Schloss Schönbrunn combines the tradition of marionette opera, which dates back to the time of Empress Maria Theresia, with modern stage and puppet technology. The "Hofratstrakt" at Schönbrunn Palace, which was built by the Empress, serves as the unique setting for the marionette theatre run by Christine and Werner Hierzer. The production uses valuable, hand-made marionettes from the theatre’s own workshops.
Gerhard Tötschinger’s production of the opera The Magic Flute is a captivating experience, accompanied by an orchestral recording by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Böhm. In deference to the location of the marionette theatre, the production transfers the setting of the opera to Schönbrunn. The outstanding skills of the puppeteers and the imagination of the audience coalesce to create an evening of unexpected delight. Each audience is drawn anew into the mystery of The Magic Flute , realising only afterwards, while walking homewards through the palace grounds, that they themselves were truly a part of the performance.
Realisation and Organisation
Vereinigte Bühnen Wien
Music
Sylvester Levay
Text
Michael Kunze
Conductor
Caspar Richter
Orchestra
Orchester der Vereinigten Bühnen Wien
Premiere
04.02.2006, 19:30
Dates
05., 09., 10., 11.02.2006, 19:30
Place
Raimund Theater
Wallgasse 18-20, 1060 Vienna
Tickets
Wien Ticket,
Phone: +43-1-58 885
www.wien-ticket.at
Web
www.musicalvienna.at Michael Kunze’s & Sylvester Levay’s acclaimed musical MOZART! is currently being performed as a concertante production at the Raimund Theater. Vereinigte Bühnen Wien features prominently on the programme of WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006. One of its contributions is the acclaimed musical MOZART! by Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay, currently being performed as a concertante production at the Raimund Theater.
MOZART! was premiered at the Theater an der Wien in October 1999 and ran there until the Vienna Festival of 2001. Subsequently the musical moved to Hamburg, and was also performed in Japan in 2002 and, in the following years, in Sweden and Hungary (where it forms part of the repertoire of the Budapest Operetta Theatre). Now MOZART! returns to Vienna for WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006 as a concertante production in costume.
In creating MOZART! Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay wanted to strip the clichéd historical figure of Mozart from his layers of kitsch and deification in order to rediscover him from a modern perspective. "No genius is as fascinating as the human being behind it," the creators of the musical maintain. Even if Mozart had not become the Mozart we know today, his biography would deserve to be retold in the modern age.
This story centres around an inspired artist who frees himself from his tyrannical, loving father and from the patronage system, in order to develop as a man and as a musician.
MOZART! is a drama about growing up - a drama with which everyone is familiar in one way or another: the drama of leaving childhood behind in order to find one’s own way in a world fraught with peril. This was particularly difficult for Mozart, whose father had presented him to all the world as a child prodigy: "We have no time to lose - because everyone loves a child prodigy, but nobody cares two pins when yet another gifted musician appears on the scene."
The Dresden china doll image that Mozart acquired as a child continued to dog the heels of the adult Wolfgang like an unwelcome shadow. The child prodigy composed incessantly, while the adult Wolfgang lived, played cards, drank, loved and dreamed.
The creators of the musical loathe pop versions of classical music. Sylvester Levay leaves Amadeus and his music untouched. However, he depicts Wolfgang the man in the musical language of the present day.
The Abduction from the Seraglio
Realisation
Vienna State Opera in co-production with the Burgtheater
Music
W. A. Mozart
Conductor
Philippe Jordan
Director
Karin Beier
Stage Design
Jens Kilian
Soloists
Diana Damrau, Julia Rempe; Franz Hawlata, Cosmin Ifrim, Daniel Kirch, Nicholas Ofczarek
Orchestra & Chorus
Vienna State Opera Orchestra & Chorus
Premiere
01.05.2006, 19.00
Mozart Werke Ges.m.b.H. by Franz Wittenbrink
Director and Musical Director
Franz Wittenbrink
Choreography
Daniela Mühlbauer
Stage Design
Thomas Dreißigacker
Artists
Kirsten Dene, Dorothee Hartinger, Pauline Knof, Gusti Wolf; Raphael von Bargen, Bernd Birkhahn, Juergen Maurer, and others
Place
Burgtheater, Dr. Karl-Lueger-Ring 2, 1010 Vienna
Tickets & Info
Bundestheater Ticket Office, Operngassse 2, 1010 Vienna
Phone: +43-1-514 44-4140
Web
www.burgtheater.at For the first time, the “House on the Ring” will host an opera: The Abduction from the Seraglio (in German), which was premiered in 1782 at the Imperial and Royal Court Theatre, the forerunner of today’s Burgtheater.
The Mozart jubilee coincides with the jubilee of the Burgtheater, providing an opportunity for one of the most extraordinary under
takings in the history of this theatre. For the first time in its existence, the Burgtheater will host an opera: The Abduction from the Seraglio , which was commissioned by Emperor Joseph II and premiered in 1782 at the Imperial and Royal Court Theatre. This theatre was the forerunner of today’s Burgtheater. The Abduction from the Seraglio , a co-production with the Vienna State Opera featuring Diana Damrau, Julia Rempe, Franz Hawlata, Cosmin Ifrim, Daniel Kirch and Nicholas Ofczarek, will be premiered on 1 May 2006. The production will be conducted by Philippe Jordan and directed by Karin Beier.
In Mozart Werke Ges.m.b.H. , Franz Wittenbrink takes a simultaneously respectful and irreverent look at art and commerce amid an outbreak of Mozart mania. Wittenbrink bows before the genius of Mozart and tries to see the humorous side of all the fuss about Amadeus in the run-up to the jubilee celebrations. With Kirsten Dene, Dorothee Hartinger,
Pauline Knof, Gusti Wolf, Raphael von Bargen, Bernd Birkhahn, Juergen Maurer, Charles Maxwell, Denis Petkovic and Hermann
Scheidleder, and the musicians Klaus David Erharter, Franz Wittenbrink, and Andreas Radovan.
Realisation
Wiener Kammeroper
Music
Stephen Oliver, based on sketches by W.A. Mozart
Text and Text Arrangement
Stephen Oliver, based on sketches by G. Varesco, translated into Italian by L. Saviori
Conductor
Daniel Hoyem-Cavazza
Stage Design and Costumes
Thomas Goerge
Lighting
Harry Michlits
Soloists
Berit Barfred-Jensen (Auretta), Judith Halász (Celidora), Magdalena Hofmann (Lavina), Maida Karisik (a strange figure), Andries Cloete (Biondello), José Aparicio (Calandrino), Noé Colin (Chiccibio), Philip Zawisza (Don Pippo)
Orchestra
Orchester der Wiener Kammeroper (Vienna Chamber Opera Orchestra)
Austrian Premiere
9 May 2006
Place
Wiener Kammeroper
Tickets & Info
Wiener Kammeroper
Fleischmarkt 24
1010 Vienna
Tel.: +43-1-512 01 00 - 77
E-mail: tickets@wienerkammeroper.at
Web:
www.wienerkammeroper.at Austrian Premiere Stephen Oliver´s chamber opera "L`oca del Cairo" is a highly subjective, independent work - written by one of the most brilliant composers of contemporary English opera, who died far too young at the age of 42.
Mozart’s L’oca del Cairo , which was planned as a two-act opera, is fragmentary in two respects: first, Varesco’s libretto was only partially set to music, and second, the musical numbers - with one exception - were composed only in short score, that is, Mozart set down only the vocal part and the orchestral bass, with occasional indications of the intended orchestration.
The fragments were composed between The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Impresario , and, especially in the conception of the finale of the first act, give a foretaste of what Mozart was to achieve in the Da Ponte operas. Stephen Oliver, for whom opera was of central importance in his own enormous oeuvre and who composed more than 40 operas, from mini-operas lasting less than 30 minutes to full-length works, saw himself as a craftsman much in the style of 18th-century composers who would undertake any commissioned work. It is therefore not surprising that he maintained close connections throughout his life with the music festival “Musica nel Chiostro” in Batignano, Tuscany, where four of his operas were first staged, the last of these being L`oca del Cairo in 1991.
Stephen Oliver extended Varesco’s libretto and slightly changed the story, which is a lighthearted comedy full of confusing absurdities. He faithfully orchestrated all of Mozart’s original sketches in the composer’s own style; however, instead of putting them all into the first act in the order Mozart intended, he distributed them throughout both acts. The hour of music which Oliver himself contributed is modern and, with its mixed tonal language, somewhat austere sound idiom and variable metre, deliberately not at all like Mozart. This both startling and amusing contrast has a fascinating effect of its own, lending a new perspective to the characters in the piece that takes them far beyond the original stereotyped figures.
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