Posts Tagged ‘Vienna Philharmonic’

Netrebko, Barcellona in Aida

Wednesday, August 30th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: August 30, 2017 SALZBURG — Qualitative upticks at the main festival here have heralded Markus Hinterhäuser’s installment as Intendant after a shaky two-summer void. The priority, it appears, is music itself over theater or opera, as might be expected from a boss who is also a professional pianist. Hinterhäuser is retaining […]

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Horses for Mozartwoche

Friday, February 24th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 24, 2017 SALZBURG — The gimmicky proposition of Mozart’s Requiem enhanced with equine ballet dominated this year’s Mozartwoche schedule, and no doubt budget. It capped, in a way, five iterations of the festival lavishly managed by Marc Minkowski and his front-office counterpart Matthias Schulz, and it brought in for the […]

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Tonhalle Lights Up the Beyond

Friday, January 27th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 27, 2017 ZURICH — It was not the most natural of programs. Beethoven’s familiar C-Major Piano Concerto (1795) prepared nobody for Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà … , or Lightning Over the Beyond … , the 65-minute theological ornithological astronomical would-be symphony Messiaen finished in 1991. Wary of the exotic fare ahead, […]

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Muti Casts His New Aida

Friday, September 9th, 2016

By ANDREW POWELL Published: September 9, 2016 SALZBURG — Today’s iconic Verdian has completed the casting for his delayed return to the iconic Verdi opera, sources say. Due next summer here, Riccardo Muti’s opening-night roster for Aida reportedly will be: Aida — Anna Netrebko Amneris — Anita Rachvelishvili* Radamès — Francesco Meli Amonasro — Luca […]

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Nitrates In the Canapés

Thursday, August 27th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: August 27, 2015 SALZBURG — Two beggars sat on either side of the entrance to the Haus für Mozart Aug. 6 as attendees arrived for Norma. As if this was not alarming enough — and it disturbed one’s thoughts more than the tense Résistance staging of Bellini’s opera inside — another […]

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Winter Discs

Tuesday, March 31st, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 31, 2015 MUNICH — Arts projects in Europe with any visual aspect to them nowadays migrate to DVD whether or not there is a need, partly to justify public subsidy through distribution. Many are operas filmed too often, like Nationaltheater Mannheim’s just-released Der Ring des Nibelungen, which joins DVD tetralogies […]

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Salzburg Coda

Friday, October 31st, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 31, 2014 SALZBURG — Alexander Pereira is now gone from the main festival here, and two tenuous summers are in the offing before Markus Hinterhäuser replaces him as Intendant in 2017. His exit, under a cloud, ends a budget tempest but threatens reversals of worthy initiatives he took: lengthening the […]

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RCO Anniversary Extravaganza

Friday, April 12th, 2013

By Rebecca Schmid If tradition means not preserving the ashes but fanning the flames, in the words of Gustav Mahler, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is celebrating its 125th anniversary with one foot firmly planted in the past and the other striding fearlessly into the future. Between a tour of six continents this season, the orchestra […]

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