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| Exclusive: Kaufmann is a member of the Beth Lynch Fan Club |
Well, in 3 hours time should you have arrived here at BST 14:21 but I would hate you to miss it. After all, how often do you get the chance to watch Kaufmann looking like Bet Lynch (if you are not from the UK you might want to look that one up).
The first opera premiere of the Wiener Philharmoniker at the 2012 Salzburg Festival – conducted by Daniel Harding – will feature a familiar work in an unfamiliar guise: Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos had its world premiere in the original version one hundred years ago. The Salzburg Festival celebrates this anniversary as homage to the three founding fathers as well, since Strauss and Hofmannsthal dedicated this opera to Max Reinhardt.
Ariadne auf Naxos was the third collaboration by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, written directly after the great success of Der Rosenkavalier. Originally planned as a “divertissement with a small chamber orchestra”, the project expanded into a grand venture combining opera, drama and ballet – and was a flop at its world premiere in 1912. Now the Salzburg Festival pledges to fulfill “the still-wonderful dream of its creators: to bring together the different genres of theater, ballet, drama, music and singing.” Sven-Eric Bechtolf will direct this unconventional production, and has not only adapted Molière’s play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, which preceded the opera at the time, but has also reinstated the ballet music written for it subsequently. “A hundred years have passed since Hofmannsthal began to work on this tale with the fiercely practical and dramaturgically highly talented Strauss, one hundred years since the disastrous world premiere of Ariadne auf Naxos. We take this ‘anniversary’ as an opportunity to revisit the original version. And where would this make more sense than in Salzburg?” (Sven-Eric Bechtolf)
Daniel Harding music director
Sven-Eric Bechtolf stage director
Rolf Glittenberg set designer
Marianne Glittenberg costume designer
Heinz Spoerli choreographer
Ronny Dietrich dramaturgy
Jürgen Hoffmann lighting designer
Wiener Philharmoniker
Emily Magee (The Prima Donna/Ariadne)
Elena Moșuc (Zerbinetta)
Jonas Kaufmann (The Tenor/Bacchus )
Eva Liebau (Naiad/A Shepherdess)
Marie-Claude Chappuis (Dryad/A Shepherd)
Eleonora Buratto (Echo/A Singer)
Gabriel Bermúdez (Harlequin)
Michael Laurenz (Scaramuccio)
Tobias Kehrer (Truffaldino)
Martin Mitterrutzner (Brighella)
Peter Matić (The Major-Domo)
Cornelius Obonya (M. Jourdain)
Thomas Frank (The Composer)
Michael Rotschopf (Hofmannsthal)
Regina Fritsch (Ottonie/Dorine)
Stefanie Dvorak (Nicolina)
Johannes Lange (Flunky)
