Posts Tagged ‘Bavarian State Orchestra’

Portraits For a Theater

Sunday, October 13th, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 13, 2013 MUNICH — Next Wednesday (Oct. 16) new portraits go on display in Bavarian State Opera’s lobby. Twenty-one new portraits. Astrid Varnay, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Kurt Moll, Brigitte Fassbaender, Lucia Popp, Edita Gruberová, René Kollo, Hildegard Behrens and Waltraud Meier are among the worthy singing subjects, company troopers all. But […]

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Kaufmann Sings Manrico

Friday, June 28th, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 28, 2013 MUNICH — It helps when two of Caruso’s “four greatest singers” live nearby, the more so when they act as capably as they sing. That was the edge enjoyed by Bavarian State Opera in restaging Verdi’s Il trovatore to open its 138-year-old Munich Opera Festival yesterday, one of […]

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Boccanegra via Tcherniakov

Saturday, June 8th, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 8, 2013 MUNICH — The drama of Verdi’s Genovese opera Simon Boccanegra, circa 1339 and 1363, pivots on the protagonist’s Solomon-like statecraft and courage, as deployed in the Council Chamber scene of Act I. Here plebeo and patrizio powers, emotional and familial woes, jostle compellingly. In his new* staging for […]

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Horn Trios in Church

Sunday, June 2nd, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 2, 2013 MUNICH — A short walk separates two of this city’s four opera houses: the Cuvilliés Theater, where Mozart conducted Idomeneo, and the National Theater, where Hans von Bülow led the first Tristan und Isolde. Ensconced half way stands the Court Church of All Saints, an 1837 neo-Romanesque, quasi-Byzantine […]

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Don Giovanni Shipped

Saturday, May 4th, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 4, 2013 MUNICH — Ádám Fischer keenly propelled a revival here last night (May 3) of Stephan Kimmig’s 3½-year-old, shipping-container staging of Don Giovanni for Bavarian State Opera. Predictably the music fared better than the dramma. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller brought an evenly produced, warmly intoned Zerlina. After a tenuous start coping […]

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Bieito Hijacks Boris

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 21, 2013 MUNICH — As dramaturgy, Calixto Bieito’s new staging here of Mussorgsky’s seven‑scene 1869 Boris Godunov (heard and seen yesterday, Feb. 20) runs into trouble almost immediately. Set in present‑day Russia — identifiable by the up‑to‑date, thug‑police gear and the wall map in Boris’s Terem (Scene V) — it […]

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Jansons! Petrenko! Gergiev!

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 23, 2013 MUNICH — With the city council’s blessing today of Valery Gergiev’s hire as the next Chefdirigent of the Munich Philharmonic, all three of the Bavarian capital’s globally renowned orchestras will be in Soviet-born hands by late 2015. This September, 40-year-old Kirill Petrenko of Omsk, Siberia, finally takes over […]

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Season of Concessions

Thursday, October 11th, 2012

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 11, 2012 MUNICH — Arts groups here present a restrained 2012–13 season facing pros and cons not always aligned with those in America. Funding, for instance, holds steady: city and state (Bavaria) play their part, as do local corporations Siemens, BMW, Audi, Allianz and Linde. Excellent pools of musicians, instrumental […]

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