Felix Breisach

A musical show combining pop, theater, and circus inspired by Johann Strauss's operetta “Cagliostro in Vienna,” written by Thomas Brezina and presented by the Roncalli circus company.

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At the Vienna Konzerthaus, the magical Christmas gala brings together Julie Fuchs and Ludovic Tézier to perform traditional carols. The programme includes Adolphe Adam's ‘Minuit chrétien’, ‘Les anges dans nos campagnes’ and ‘Entre le boeuf et l'âne gris’, followed by “Hallelujah” from Handel's ‘Messiah’.

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When Tchaikovsky premiered his famous ballet The Nutcracker in Saint Petersburg 130 years ago, it was presented as a double bill, as standard at the time, together with the opera Iolanta. The Volksoper Wien, being part home to the famous Wiener Staatsballett, under the helm of the new artistic director Lotte de Beer and music director Omer Meir Wellber presents both works again in one evening, but not as two separate pieces, but by fusing the two works into one.

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The virtuoso pianist Víkingur Olafsson electrifies the Bremen Festival with Edvard Grieg's “Piano Concerto in A minor” (1868).

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Under the baton of its artistic director, Shunsuke Sato, the Netherlands Bach Society performs Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s “Magnificat” at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Bremen.

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Janáček's three-act opera Katya Kabanova, staged by Barrie Kosky and staged at the Felsenreitschule by Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša with an international cast of soloists, was performed on August 7 at the 2022 Salzburg Festival. The opera is based on the play The Storm by Aleksandr Ostrovsky. Set in a small Russian town, the story revolves around Káta, who is trapped in a loveless marriage to an abusive man named Boris. When she meets and falls in love with a young man named Vána Kudrjáš, she finally experiences happiness and passion. But their relationship is short-lived, as Boris finds out and forces Káta to confess her infidelity in front of the entire town. The opera explores themes of social conformity, oppression, and the consequences of forbidden love. Stage director Barrie Kosky creates an intimate but impressive setting in the magnificent Felsenreitschule.

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The traditional Christmas concert enchants every year with classic and popular Christmas music from all over the world. The most touching program highlights of the Vienna Christmas Concert.

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Don Florestan is a personal enemy of the governor Don Pizarro and also a confidant of the minister Don Fernando. As Pizarro sees Florestan as a threat, he wants to eliminate him. He cannot bring himself to commit open murder, so he has him secretly imprisoned and hopes that he will soon die of his own accord. Florestan's wife Leonore suspects that Pizarro is behind her husband's disappearance. Disguised as a man, she sets off in search of Florestan and, under the name "Fidelio", takes up service as an assistant to the jailer Rocco - she suspects Florestan is in the prison he administers and hopes to free him.

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"I am from Austria" is a jukebox musical consisting of the songs by the Austrian songwriter Rainhard Fendrich. The musical premiered in September 2017 in Raimund Theater in Vienna. The plot circles around Emma Carter, a Hollywood star with Austrian roots, who who returns to her native country for the Vienna Opera Ball and to promote her new movie.

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The show legend Dagmar Koller, the disco queen of the seventies and author Penny McLean as well as the Carinthian ice hockey family Kalt lead through the Klagenfurt of their childhood and youth.

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Live recording from Oper Zurich, 2008, DVD release 2014. Jonas Kaufmann, 'the Prince of Tenors', appears with international star Vesselina Kasarova in Zürich Opera's starkly palpable staging of Bizet's ever-popular Carmen. The production sees Don José (Kaufmann) abandon his teenage attitudes in pursuit of Kasarova's free and independent Carmen - realising too late that his self-control has vanished, along with his youth.

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The world premiere of the opera Spuren der Verirrten (The Lost) composed by Philip Glass.

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Live performance from the Salzburg Festival, 6 August 2012.

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Features a great cast: Ambrogio Maestri is one of the finest Falstaffs of our time. The Italian baritone brings a powerful, versatile voice to his role, but also brings his character a hilarious buffo quality. Daniele Gatti, one of the most acclaimed opera conductors working today, leads a stunning cast of singers including Barbara Fritolli as Alice Ford. Genuinely warm italianita in all of the music-making, combined with a boisterous production by stage director Sven-Eric Bechtolf, turns Verdis commedia lirica into a fireworks display of high spirits as well as what the Neue Zürcher Zeitung called musically and dramaturgically a feast of life and of love of life.

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This is Schrott's second Figaro in a less than twelve month period, the earlier being the ROH production. The two productions have vast differences as well as similarities. The ROH production as been set in the equivalent of the Regency period--Spanish version. The Zurich is set in what appears to be the 1950's. For those who note such things, Schrott can appear sans shirt, but in an undershirt in the Zurich house. Vocally there is no difference between the two performances. The man has a glorious multi-hued voice over which he has complete command. Not only is he good looking he can act. He should have a great career. Indeed, the virile sound he produces would lead one to wonder if the great Verdi baritone roles are within his ability.

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Live from the Zurich Opera House, 2009.

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Never seen before: an opera in Zurich station, amidst the throngs of passengers. When lyrical art comes down from its pedestal to meet the public.

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Arabella, Op. 79, is a lyric comedy or opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration. Arabella is determined to marry for love, not wealth - against the wishes of her impoverished aristocratic parents. When she gives her heart to the mysterious Mandryka, a series of misunderstandings puts their love to the test.

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Live performance at Opernhaus Zürich in 2006. Nello Santi conducting Orchester der Oper Zürich and Chor der Oper Zürich. Directed for the stage by Gilbert Deflo.

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Live performance Zürich, May and July 2006. Modern dress performance which generated mixed reactions.

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Faust - a lonely scholar, despairing of life, who has so far failed to discover its highest meaning - is given a book on black magic from three mysterious students from Cracow. When Mephistopheles appears and proposes a pact with Faust, the two of them set off together on a (dream) journey. Doktor Faust remained a fragment at the time of the composer's death. Busoni died in 1924, unable to complete what he himself described as his "state masterpiece" - an opera to which he had a deep personal attachment. The missing scenes from the score were completed by his pupil, Philipp Jarnach, whom Busoni had become acquainted with during his period in exile in Zurich. In this form the opera was given its first performance in Dresden in 1925. Then in the 1980s the conductor Anthony Beaumont came across previously undiscovered sketches by Busoni and produced a new version of Doktor Faust. The current recording uses the Jarnach score.

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The Zurich Opera gathered a superb cast for this production: Italian soprano Eva Mei sings the Countess Violante, known as Sandrina, the feigned gardener of the title. Spanish soprano Isabel Rey is her opponent Arminda, and Arminda's former lover, the melancholy Cavaliere Ramiro, is sung by Romanian mezzo Liliana Nikiteanu. Moretti's staging presents the action in a modern villa in a hierarchical world of the rich and famous.

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The Martin Kušej production of Richard Strauss's "Elektra", filmed live at the Opernhaus Zurich on 30 November and 4 December 2005. Eva Johansson stars as Elektra, with Marjana Lipovšek as Klytämnestra, Melanie Diener as Chrysothemis, Rudolf Schashing as Aegisth, and Alfred Muff as Orest. Christoph von Dohnányi conducts.

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This DVD of a live 2005 performance from the Zürich Opera under the musical direction of Franz Welser-Möst has many things to recommend it -- the young tenor Piotr Beczala as Alfredo, the marvelous Thomas Hampson as Giorgio Germont, the playing of the Zurich Opera orchestra, the simple but effective sets by by Erich Wonder, the uncluttered stage direction by Jürgen Flimm. It also has some flaws: strangely variable volume level of the recorded sound sometimes coming on so loud as to make one reach for the volume control, and the uneven performance of the Violetta, Eva Mei who, for all her merits, gives a dramatically effective performance marred by occasional difficulties with vocal production. Still, overall I felt this was a moving production, one that I would recommend, although perhaps not as an only DVD of one of Verdi's most popular operas.

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This is an effective staging, though the set looks medieval and the costumes are modern. It’s well paced, well played, well sung. Jonas Kaufmann is an ideal Tito. His voice is not only beautiful and flexible, it’s also ample, retaining warmth and sweetness when he sings out. The character of Tito is too good to be true, but Kaufmann makes him intense, noble, and beliveable. Vesselina Kasarova is riviting as Sesto. Her voice is gorgeous and multi-colored, her technique exquisite, her immersion in the role complete.

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Claude Debussy's fairy tale-based opera Pelléas et Mélisande is by now well known; at once a tale of doomed love and a meditation on the cycle of creation and destruction (adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's 1893 symbolist play), it originally premiered in 1902 to mixed critical reception, but has since become a staple of the operatic repertory and one of the most popular works from Debussy's canon. This particular production emerged from the Opernhaus Zürich in 2004. It stars Rodney Gilfry as Pelléas, Isabel Rey as Mélisande and Michael Volle as Golaud. Franz Welser-Möst conducts the Zurich Opera Orchestra; Sven-Eric Bectholf directs for the stage.

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A rich man invites to a banquet at which - at his wish - a new opera, Ariadne auf Naxos, is to be performed simultaneously with the improvised play The Faithless Zerbinetta and Her Four Lovers.

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Nikolaus Harnoncourt is the conductor in this 2004 production of Beethoven's only opera staged at the Zurich Opera House. Finnish soprano Camilla Nyland takes the title role, with performances by Jonas Kaufmann, Laszlo Polgar and Alfred Muff.

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Live from Munich, October 2003. A husband laments the death of his wife. He follows her to the underworld and finds her there. But he is forbidden to look at her. He does it anyway! Has he now lost her forever? Or will the gods' hearts be moved by this loving, "human" glance? In 1762, Gluck put the quietus on the artificiality of baroque opera with this work - from then on the human element took center stage.

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After ten years battling in the Trojan War—and another ten on an epic journey homeward—Ulysses returns to his homeland. Disguised as a beggar, the king of Ithaca must recover his wife, his son, and his people... Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Venice, 1640), directed here by Klaus-Michael Grüber and conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, achieves a perfect dramatic balance, stirring the imagination and instantly transporting the viewer to a long-ago time. The all-star cast features one of the earliest recorded appearances by the great Jonas Kaufmann, who makes his presence felt as Ulisse's son Telemaco.

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In 1948 Pablo Picasso met the hairdresser Eugenio Arias. Both were linked by the fate of emigration. If Picasso initially only had his hair cut by Arias, a deep friendship soon developed.

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Live performance from Zürich Opera House, 2001. “Vesselina Kasarova’s Rosina turned this Barber into a major event. Pearling coloratura, endless resources of vocal colour and nuance and phenomenal acting versatility became mere means to an end: that of making Rosina into a human being of flesh and blood, with heart, humour and considerable brains.

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World-famous baritone Thomas Hampson hosts this tribute to Italy's best known and most beloved composer, Giuseppe Verdi. Tracing the life of one of opera's greatest luminaries, this documentary, shot on location in Italy and France, invites you to visit the hometown of the composer and takes you on a journey to the cities -- including Paris -- that Verdi visited during his musical career. The video also includes four Verdi arias sung by Hampson.

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The show legend Dagmar Koller, the disco queen of the seventies and author Penny McLean as well as the Carinthian ice hockey family Kalt lead through the Klagenfurt of their childhood and youth.

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