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| go to lobby page | more reviews | go to other departments | GLENN LONEY'S SHOW NOTES
[01] Splendors of Salzburg
ART DECO MEETS BAROQUE--Salzburg Festival production of Rameau's Les Boréades. Photo: Copyright © —David Baltzer 1999.
[02] Innovative Salzburg Festival
[03] Startling Artistic Squabbles
[04] Gerard Mortier Departing 2001
[05] Short-List for Mortier Successor
[06] Updating Rameau's Boréades
[07] Circus Version of Magic-Flute
[08] Busoni's Doktor Faust
[09] Marathon Shakespeaere Schlachten
[10] Italian Fascist Don Giovanni
[11] Zeitfluss Not the Salzburg Fringe
[12] Fest Theme: Code der Gefühle
[13] American Friends' Symposia
[14] Next Summer in Salzburg
[15] Norrington & Schumann at Mozarteum
[16] Salzburg Marionettes Coming to New York
[17] New Classical CDs
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For our archive of Glenn Loney's previous 1999 columns, click here.
Splendor & Squabbles in Salzburg!
Salzburg's shimmering splendor is its centuries of architectural monuments, bathed in the rosy glow of sunrise, the bright blazing sun of noonday—complete with Glockenspiel, and the soft shadowy tones of sunset.It has a long line of Roman-Catholic Prince-Archbishops to thank for these magnificent castles, cloisters, churches, courtyards, and its great baroque Cathedral.
Not to overlook its fantastic fountains, handsome horse-baths, gracious gardens, sensuous sculptures, and pretentious palaces.
Some of Salzburg's great Temporal & Spiritual Princes were obviously deaf to Jesus' words: "Sell all that thou hast and give to the Poor." Still, Jesus also said: "The Poor ye have always with ye."
Soup-Kitchens are all very well, but there will always be more and more of the Poor in line. Magnificent monuments can be enjoyed by everyone, rich and poor—and they won't be sipped away in a matter of days or months.
A great cathedral like Salzburg's can endure for centuries, giving hope and sanctuary to all—unless the Americans bomb it. Even then, it can be reconstructed, stronger and more beautiful than before.
Salzburg's Splendid Festival:
The other major splendor of Salzburg is of much more recent origin. It is the famed Salzburg Festival, established in the early 1920s by the director Max Reinhardt, the poet-playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and other leading Austrian artists.Discounting the unfortunate Nazi pre-emption of the Festival—with Adolf Hitler demanding changes in structure and decor of the Festspielhaus—it has had a very long and distinguished history of innovative productions of opera, drama, dance, and, of course, brilliant concerts.
The late Festival Intendant and conductor, Herbert von Karajan, raised the level of production opulence and musical quality to a height difficult to match. But some critics complained of a lack of modern musical and dramatic experiments and of innovation in the arts and technology of staging.
With the ascendancy of Gerard Mortier—who had made an enviable reputation in Brussels as Intendant of the Théâtre de la Monnaie—audiences and critics began to get innovation with a vengeance.
Some even thought they detected a sense of vengeance in Mortier, possibly a rubbing of the conservative noses of Salzburg's wealthy public in the most discordant of New Music, the most disturbing of Avant-Garde Drama, and the most disconcerting of New Stagecraft.
Some Karajan Old-Timers went off to Baden-Baden, hoping to recreate a Lost Paradise. But they forgot that you cannot step twice into the same river. You can, however, step twice in the same doo-doo.
Just as technology is rushing ahead at almost exponential rates, the graphic, spatial, architectural, literary, and performing arts are also loping ahead, desperately trying to keep up. There is no turning back.
Some Startling Artistic Squabbles:
But this past summer, it seemed that some important Salzburgers and Austrians do not seem to believe that.Salzburg had some surprising summer artistic squabbles as a result. These were provoked by unfortunate confrontations of Festival programmers Mortier and his drama consultant Frank Baumbauer with Festival administrative officers such as Dr. Helga Rabl-Stadler, Festival President.
The alleged provinciality of some local Festival officers who are not involved in the artistic decisions was clearly at issue. Mortier emphatically repeated his commitment to innovation and experiment.
Dr. Thomas Klestil, Austria's President, delivered an opening address at the Festival which suggested its planners might do well to re-examine the legacy of Von Hofmannsthal. This was pouring petrol on already glowing coals.
The President had shortly before, at the Bregenz Festival, condemned the current enthusiasm of the public for the Fake instead of the Real, the sensational rather than the temperately true.
With the bombing of Belgrade on the wane, the press descended on this Austrian teapot-tempest. Commentators wondered in print who had actually written the President's Salzburg speech?
Was there some hidden subtext regarding government subsidies—of which the Festival needs a lot, especially from Vienna?
Did the President really long for the return of a Max Reinhardt production or even a Von Karajan epic?
Although certainly not mentioned by name, Mortier—it was reported—believed he was being personally attacked for his artistic policies.
A New German Word: Modderfocker!
With the premiere of Schlachten—a German version of a Belgian condensation of all Shakespeare's History Plays into a mere twelve-hours—the fat was in the now sputtering fire.Initially, Salzburg youths were banned from performances.
Not only were there gallons of blood and other body-fluids—not to mention cross-dressing and gross sexual pantomimes—but the text frequently substituted Bardic verbal elegance for Belgian variations of American slang.
King Richard III was identified as "Dirty Rich Modderfocker." Among other truly gratuitous explorations of gutter garrulousness.
The outcry in major newspapers and on television rapidly rescinded the official attempt to censor "artistic expression," however.
But Dr. Rabl-Stadler—while insisting she had very much liked a raffish staging of Ödön von Horváth's Zur schönen Aussicht—made matters worse by observing that many of the spectators didn't get it at all.
Drama-advisor Frank Baumbauer, she noted, didn't have to answer to the public. She did. That provoked another round of recriminations.
Strangling the Lady-President:
Austria's lively version of Time, called Profil, provided a full report—on which this is based—in the 9 August 1999 issue. It's true, however, that Profil thrives on controversy.Its report, by Wolfgang Reiter, was titled—as are the Salzburg Shakespeare (slightly abridged) Histories—Schlachten. Half the leading-page was filled with a colorful cartoon of Baumbauer strangling the astonished Dr. Rabl-Stadler. Other leading players brandished baseball bats, chairs, even batons.
On the facing-page, the cartoon was extended, with President Klestil—holding a book of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's writings under one arm—grabbing a defenseless Mortier by the tie—while mayhem multiplied in the background.
Wolfgang Reiter's comment on the Von Horváth staging may explain why I didn't get a ticket to see it, although I requested one months before.
[It is an extremely interesting and depressing early work by this important Austrian author from Between the Wars. He was killed in Paris by a falling tree-branch in a thunderstorm, just after he'd seen Walt Disney's Dumbo!
[Fortunately, I had seen productions of it in Munich and elsewhere. But never in America. His Tales of the Vienna Woods is the only Von Horváth drama to have had major professional productions in the United States. Christopher Hampton, however, wrote a play imagining him alive and an exile from Nazism in Hollywood. Chatting with Bertolt Brecht, Lotte Lenya, and Heinrich Mann.]
And here's what Wolfgang Reiter had to say about the Salzburg production: "Anyone who saw the sour faces of the spectators fleeing the performance knows what the President [Dr. Rabl-Stadler] means."
This makes the periodic "scandals" about innovative new Wagner productions in Bayreuth seem tame indeed.
Mortier May Be Well Out-of-It:
So Gerard Mortier's projected departure as Artistic Director of the Salzburg Festival in 2001 may be both a blessing for him. And for his detractors as well.It's inconceivable—after his daring Salzburg programming and much-needed modernizations—that he would return to boring old Brussels. The meat, chicken, and Coca-Cola™ aren't safe!
The only performing-arts position with an even bigger perspective and challenge than he now has would be the General-Intendancy of all the newly Federal Berlin's theatres, operas, and arts ensembles.
As Germany's historic and newly reinstated capital, Berlin—and its potential audiences—will grow exponentially. Instead of closing down theatres made "redundant" by the Fall of the Wall—when some 25 theatres in the West duplicated as many in the East—these and new playhouses will need to be constructed.
Currently, Berlin has virtually no viable artistic policy for the performing arts. And no apparent vision for the future—at least not one that has been unveiled.
As Mortier knows from his Salzburg experience, politicians may not be the best judges of what operas and theatres should be producing.
Place Your Bets on the Next Intendant:
The handicapping is already underway on the stakes for new Festival Director. Just four days before the Total Sonnen-Finsterness—or Eclipse—in Salzburg, the Salzburger Nachrichten devoted most of a page to a speculation on the qualities of "The Ideal Artistic Leader."It also listed some 13 potential candidates. They include conductors Claudio Abbado and Sir Simon Rattle, composers Udo Zimmermann and Peter Ruzicka. Richard Wagner's great-grand-daughter Eva Wagner-Pasquier, the Houston Opera's David Glockley, the Opera-Bastille's Hughes Gall, and Brian McMaster, Director of the Edinburgh Festival.
It had been rumored for some time that McMaster wanted the Salzburg Intendancy. I asked him about this at the Humana Festival in Louisville, and he assured me it was an honor he dreamt not of. Wait and see!
In addition to Klaus Bachler, Stéphane Lissner, Alexander Pereira, and strong>Klaus Zehelein, the current Salzburg Drama Consultant, Frank Baumbauer, is short-listed!
After the strong language he used to disparage Dr. Rabl-Stadler's judgment, he may have damaged his chances.
Great performances often are created in an atmosphere of cooperation, respect, and dedication—rather than constant confrontation.
Anyway, Baumbauer already has a new job in Munich. He succeeds Dieter Dorn as Intendant of the famed Kammerspiele.
With his strong record of imaginative, innovative, and ingenious stagings of operas and dramas, Dieter Dorn might be just the man to guide the Salzburg Festival into the new century!
He'll show his new Tristan at the Met this season. His Bayreuth Flying Dutchman is a masterpiece of Post-Modernism. His recent Munich Ithaka andCymbeline were most impressive stagings.
But it would certainly be quite a surprise if a Yank or a Brit got the Salzburg job. For starters, he or she would have to speak German. Even if not the German of Goethe or Von Hofmannsthal.
Baroque Music & Art Deco Elegance:
Updating Rameau's Les Boréades
Jean-Philippe Rameau's Les Boréades lay forgotten in the archives for two—hundred years. It should have been premiered in 1763, but rehearsals were broken off. And Rameau died the following year. After which, the popular taste for such baroque operas was on the wane.It had to wait until 1982 for a fully-staged premiere, conducted for the Aix-en-Provence Festival by John Eliot Gardiner. Sir Simon Rattle led the Orchestra of the Enlightenment in an elegant reading of the score for Salzburg.
That ingenious opera-production team, Ursel and Karl-Ernst Hermann, avoided the obvious design and staging solutions of setting the fable in Pre-Classic Greece or a fantastic Baroque Arcadia.
The mythical plot concerns the dire doom which awaits the proud Queen Alphise [Barbara Bonney] of Bactria—where they have those camels with humps unlike the Dromedaries. But this lovely monarch is not about to walk a mile for a camel.
She'd go to her death rather than marry one of the two importunate and annoying sons of Boreas, the God of the North Wind [David Wilson-Johnson]. She loves an unknown Stranger, Abaris [Charles Workman], with no apparent royal antecedents. But she is obliged to marry a man of Boreas' line.
Fortunately, the God Apollo [Lorenzo Regazzo] is monitoring events below on earth, with the aid of his heavenly messenger Amor [Heidi Grant Murphy].
In the proverbial nick-of-time, he reveals himself as the father of the unknown son—whose courage and character in the interim have proven him worthy of such a divine dad. What's more, Abaris is the product of Apollo's fleeting union with a Borean Nymph. So he's both divinely and mythically acceptable as Alphise's consort.
The Hermanns enclose all this action in an elegant oval Art Moderne chamber, glittering with silver-leaf. On a chrome-railed balcony above, Boreas and Apollo follow the action, interfering when needed. Ascents and descents from this level take place in elevators inside the cross-section of the walls, silhouetted behind translucent panels.
Amor makes loving descents on a couch of red lips—a favored image in Tom Wesselman's paintings. Apollo, God of the Sun, descends in a blazing diamond.
The raked stage—enclosed by chrome railings—is mounted on pistons so it can surge this way and that when shaken by Boreas' furious and punitive storms: Art Deco Hurricane Floyd!
On the upper level, the silvered walls are pierced by four oval windows. Below, there are three massive French-doors, separated by four low arches. Outside in the garden, Commedia dell'Arte players are seen tumbling, trampolining, and walking the slack-wire.
Elegantly fantastic costumes range from 18th and 19th century silhouettes to silk Deco jackets and jodhpurs and Thé-dansant tuxedos. One of the windy Boreal sons wears a bellows-like wing-backpack of feathers.
Outside the windows, three levels and three shades of hedge rise up. Later a hedge snakes into the chamber, following a spiral groove until it creates a three-leveled wall for hiding and cavorting.
A great forest grows up behind the hedges outside. When Boreas sends his destructive storm, the tree-drop moves to show only blasted trunks. Later, when all is made right by Apollo, the verdant forest returns to view.
If all this sounds like too much and too precious, it doesn't begin to catalogue all the props, costumes, special-effects, tricks, images, and dances.
The choreographies and music-inspired movement seem devised to distract attention from the fact that Rameau's score—despite the protestations of its admirers that it was brilliantly fashioned to support the fable—is a musical pastiche.
A delightful one, true, but a score with many dance-interludes which contribute little or nothing to the work as music-theatre.
Mozart's Five-Ring Circus:
Achim Freyer's Fantastic Zauberflöte
Actually, Achim Freyer's colorful and hilarious staging of Mozart's Magic-Flute incorporates far more than five rings into its concentric designs. But its center-piece is a great raked circle, recalling the traditional one-ring circuses of Europe.
PAPAGENO IN THE PICTURE--Colorful Salzburg Festival Magic-Flute is presented as a circus-show. Photo: Copyright © —Monika Rittershaus 1999. And—as in such venues, like Circus Schumann—it also has a form of proscenium-arch theatre upstage behind the performance ring. This makes possible an astonishing variety of stage-pictures, some of them amusing visual footnotes to major action downstage.
Sarastro, for example, appears in various fantastic guises in this space: sometimes as a god high overhead, another time as a giant puppet. At a crucial moment, he emerges from a circular hole in the star-studded circus-tent ceiling to protect Tamino and Pamina, as long rods terminating in hands—the symbolic Egyptian hieroglyphic images for the rays of Ra, the sun-god—radiate downward.
Papageno, the bird-catcher for the Queen of the Night, warms up the audience and makes a Ringling Brothers entrance on a Rube Goldberg tricycle hung with bird-cages. He deftly balances a towering stack of cages—suspended by a fine wire—as well.
The circus-ring is flanked by tiers of bleachers on either side, while the audience sits in temporary bleachers in Messehalle 1 of Salzburg's Austellungs-Zentrum, or fair-and-exhibition venue.
Until 2001, this space will be transformed every summer into Freyer's Magic-Flute Hall. But it is not in downtown Salzburg, nor all that easily accessible by bus. Fortunately, people who can afford Festival opera tickets usually have cars.
Freyer—who is also a painter and sculptor, as well as a stage-director and designer—has his own special visual vocabulary of images. He is partial to skulls and to hopscotch patterns, so some of these turn up in his Salzburg Zauberflöte. They are also on view to the westward in Munich, where he incorporates them in his new staging of Monteverdi's L'Orféo.
Unique and brightly colored steel sculptures Freyer has based on Magic Flute designs were on display outside the Messehalle. There were even one or two in the heart of Salzburg in the garden of the Jesuit Collegiate Church.
For those in the audience who may not be familiar with Mozart's "Masonic" opera—or its length—Freyer has saved them the trouble of looking at their watches periodically.
As the production progresses, a large illuminated snail—with a big watch-face framed by its shell—crawls around the stage perimeter from right to left, keeping very accurate time. It reaches Stage-Right just as the opera ends!
Conductor Christoph von Dohnányi—who often gives the impression of great seriousness on the concert podium—joins in the circus atmosphere with gusto, getting a very lively reading of Mozart's score from the Vienna Philharmonic. Neither he nor Freyer go so far as to ask it to impersonate a circus brass-band en masse, however.
Matthias Goerne is a jolly, knockabout Papageno, a singing clown children in the audience adore. Franz-Josef Selig, as Ring-Master Sarastro, manages sonorous fatherly majesty, despite the odd costumes and strange perches assigned him by Freyer.
As Queen of the Night, Laura Aikin sings her challenging coloratura arias with skill, but in some circumstances even a trapeze-artist would have questioned.
Matthias Klink and Dorothea Röschmann—the Tamino and Pamina—are visually and vocally well matched and attractive. Olga Schalaewa is a delightful Papagena. Indeed, the entire cast is very good, given all the circus-extras expected of them.
Freyer's concept is that the cast is actually a troupe of traveling circus-folk, pitching their gaudy tent wherever they find a ready audience.
He had tried this out previously at the Festival in the venerable Felsenreitschule, with its baroque arcades, carved out of the solid rock of the great Mönschberg. Unfortunately for some regulars—who looked forward to seeing the famous arches—the tent hid all the historic rock architecture.
A special dividend in moving to the edge of the city is that the venue is much larger. With 2,200 seats, that means some ten-thousand people can enjoy the performances at much lower prices than usual in the central venues. Cut-price tickets can also be provided for children and teens.
Freyer believes he's also recreating some of the original circumstances of production. Schickaneder's theatre was on the suburbs of Vienna. He played to audiences of ordinary people who could not afford costly tickets—or easily go to the heart of Vienna for a Night at the Opera.
And—despite the mysterious Masonic Symbolism and the endless scholarly studies of meanings and intentions of the libretto and score—initially all Schickaneder wanted was a merry musical romp that would, as they say, "put bums on seats."
After Tenure in Wittenberg, What?
Busoni's Insatiable Doktor Faust
To celebrate Goethe's 250 Birthday, the Salzburg Festival premiered new productions of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust and Busoni's Doktor Faust. Barcelona's Fura dels Baus—in addition to staging the Berlioz—also conjured up a quasi-computer-version of the fable of the unfortunate Professor from Wittenberg University.This is titled F@ust Version 3.0 and was created with e-mail input as well as other computer hardware and software technology. In the Hallein Salt-Mine Hall, its production supposedly suggested the effect of computer-generated Virtual Reality. I was not able to see it, but I did get a print-out of two pages from Fura, showing all the Faust sites and mentions they found on the Internet.
One scholarly commentary on the production noted that "Life kills Faust."
To celebrate the Total Eclipse on 11 August, the ingenious Catalans also arranged for Faust and Margarethe's heads to be mounted in Munich before the Muffat-Halle. The path of the Eclipse led from Munich to Salzburg, where Gretchen's immense body was erected on the great alpine peak of the Gaisberg.
This eight-meter-high puppet was, supposedly, looking for her head. And she was being bombarded with questions relayed over the Internet from around the world.
Her answers were a prelude to the gradually darkening of the sun. In the ensuing darkness, Margarethe's body burst into flames.
When the sun emerged from behind the moon, the Orféon Donastiarra Chorus greeted it with Margarethe's final aria from Berlioz' opera. There was a website for this fiery alpine adventure: www.faust.shadow.com
Obviously, a lot of philosophical brainstorming goes into such productions.
Not only are the hefty programs at Salzburg, Bayreuth, Bregenz, and Munich crammed with dense essays on Meanings, Symbols, Sources, and Influences important to understanding various operas—and dramas—but directors and designers also weigh in with their own often impressive explanations of what they have discovered from such scholarship and their own researches.
In my time, I've interviewed a great many opera and drama directors and designers. Seldom have I encountered an American with the cultural background, artistic intelligence, and psychological insight of many European colleagues.
Peter Mussbach, who staged Busoni's Doktor Faust, is especially interesting in explaining his philosophical and psychological insights into the libretto and the score.
Obviously, his brilliant conductor, Kent Nagano, also did his homework, as did the designers Erich Wonder and Andrea Schmidt-Futterer The result is visually, musically, emotionally, and metaphorically haunting, even unforgettable.
What it is not is optimistic, upbeat, cheerful, or amusing. Except for a brief glittering hallucinatory scene in the Court of Parma, an ashen gray atmosphere pervades the stage-environment.
Busoni—according to an insightful essay by Barrymore Laurence Scherer in the American Friends' program-insert—believed opera should not be merely a play with music. Instead, it should interpret the frames of mind of the characters.
In Busoni's view, opera should present: "…the invisible and inaudible, the spiritual processes of the personages portrayed, which music should render intelligible." For him, the proper subjects of opera had to be incredible, unreal, magical, not the stuff of daily-life.
The composer crafted his own text, which he called a Poem for Music—in two prologues, an interlude, and three major scenes.
Thus, it is by no means another retelling of Goethe's Faust, though it does draw heavily on Part II, largely ignoring Part I.
For Mussbach, the unfolding libretto is a Series of Stations—a kind of Kreuzweg or Stations of the Cross—for Faust. The scenes are linked elements in a chain in a journey.
But this is a metaphoric trip through Faust's memory—a voyage in the World in Faust's brain. Each of his memories relates to what preceded and what follows.
For that reason, Mussbach's direction and his designers' visual evocations have the dynamics of a daydream, a hallucination, or even a nightmare. It is the backward-looking journey, not of Goethe's Faust, but of a certain Mr. X.
Mussbach believes—from his study of the opera and Busoni's own life and work—that Mr. X is the composer himself.
At the end, shuffling into a darkening emptiness, an endless, hopeless perspective of diminishing telephone-poles, Faust has driven himself toward defeat. But he may still find his way toward Infinity.
In performance, Busoni's score seems lush, lyric, even cinematic—as if it is an underscored accompaniment for the emotions and fragmentary action.
In the opening scene, a series of long low horizontal tracks are revealed, crossing the stage and reached from low openings on either side of the stage. Black-garbed students from Cracow—doubtless agents of Mephistopheles—bring Faust a huge mysterious Black Book, pushing it in on a trolley.
Flames burst from one's hat, another's coat. But they do not consume them. There is, in fact, a lot of fire and flame in this production. At one point, a baby-carriage with the child of Faust and the Duchess of Parma bursts into flames.
In another stark scene, a crowd of hunchbacked, fat-bellied Tiepolo clowns in tall white caps surround the morose Faust, seated in a black chair. A great frame, setting off a vision of billowing waves or clouds, suddenly bursts into flame.
Erich Wonder's visual effects are wonders indeed. The Court of Parma—with the Duke, Duchess, and courtiers in golden Renaissance costumes—is itself framed with effects of baroque stagecraft. Here, Faust produces his Parade of Great Lovers of History—who all seem to resemble him and the Duchess.
Helen of Troy is a projection of an Eye. Wonder also has the horizon divide, resembling a wide expanse of teeth.
Faust's enemies are symbolically vanquished. In one stunning scene, a Samurai in medieval Japanese armor—kneeling in a projection of a golden room with many doors—is ceremonially slaughtered by demons dressed as warriors.
When Faust's apprentice of long ago, Wagner, is made Rector of Wittenberg, there's a student snowball fight. He is an academic of no imagination or curiosity. So he hasn't made his master's mistakes. Faust melts into the snow.
All of these magical and astonishing effects would count for nothing were it not for the impressive and moving performance of Thomas Hampson as Faust. He holds the entire production together—as Busoni obviously intended his Faust should.
The Mephistopheles of Chris Merritt, interestingly enough, looks like an older, more devious avatar of Faust himself. They could be brothers.
If this description makes you regret you weren't able to experience the production in Salzburg, do not despair. It's a co-production with the Met Opera and will eventually be shown—and sung—at Lincoln Center.
Salzburg' Shakespeare Marathon:
Twelve Hours of Dynastic Schlachten
This past summer, both Belgian meat and chicken were removed from store-shelves because of contamination with dioxin. They weren't the only Belgian products tainted.
Flemings Luc Perceval [staging] and Tom Lanoye [text] had the idea to boil down all Shakespeare's Chronicle Plays to their essentials. Eliminating all of the poetry, most of the philosophy, and the distinctive characterizations, they were able to reduce the History Plays to two parts totaling 12 hours.
SHAKESPEARE STRIPPED-DOWN--Detail from Salzburg Festival's Schlachten, a 12-hour condensation of all the Bard's History Plays. Photo: Copyright © —Mattias Horn 1999. Had they followed the example of America's Reduced Shakespeare Company, they could have brought their played text in at about 30 minutes. It takes only 90 minutes to perform The Complete Works of Shakespeare (slightly abridged) .
Of course that popular entertainment—which is being played all over Europe in major state and city-theatres, by leading classical actors—is an hilarious spoof. Schlachten is of course not without its laughable moments, but some of them appear unintentional.
Lanoye and Perceval are reported to have had a great success with this work in Belgium. For Salzburg, it was translated into German—though some of the text contains direct quotes from Shakespeare as well as American vulgarisms.
They certainly had a Salzburg Festival precedent. Some years ago, when Milan's ingenious director Giorgio Strehler was being groomed by Maestro Herbert Von Karajan to head the theatre-program—as Peter Stein did recently—he imported his own distillation of the History Plays.
His Italian epic, Il Gioco dei Potenti, was transformed into Spiel der Mächtigen—or The Play of the Powerful.
Just before the two-evening premiere, Max Reinhardt's widow, the actress Helene Thimig—who was staging her husband's seminal Jedermann in the Cathedral Square—told me she considered Maestro Strehler the worthy successor to Reinhardt in Salzburg.
In the event, Strehler didn't even get the second evening properly rehearsed. But the initial section was disastrous enough. The image which remains with me is of frantic actors racing around a football-field-arena with a cardboard suitcase. Periodically, it would fall open, spilling out paper crowns.
What spills out in Schlachten are coils of bloody guts, like yards of spaghetti with meat-sauce. The obvious visual goal is to be even more gorily Gothickally shocking than Paris' notorious Théâtre du Grand Guignol.
After the full 12 hours, the clear message is that power-hungry people will stop at nothing—and stoop ever lower—to achieve dominion over others. As well as have a lot of explicit sex, intrigue, and violence along the road to the top.
Even in far-off Berlin, Detlef Friedrich's review in the Berliner Zeitung was headed, in English: Fucking Shakespeare.
Before sharing a few production details, it's only fair to note that the actors involved in this project are clearly all very talented. What's more, they obviously threw themselves into their many demanding roles with tremendous energy and commitment. Even in their most degrading moments—and these were legion—they did not betray the slightest hint of: "I'm only acting this—it's not the way I really am."
On those days when both parts were played—in a salt-drying hall in the Hallein Salt Mines—audiences were blinded by a strong spotlight on stage pointed directly into their eyes at 11 am. This ball of incandescent white marked all breaks as well. The evening ground to a close at 11 pm.
The expensive program—weighing several pounds—contained the complete text, essays, and many photos of the production. When we left the hall, there were a number of the books left behind.
Perceval and Lanoye divided their epic into five sections: Richard Deuxième, Heinrich 4 und Der fünfte Heinrich, Margaretha di Napoli, Eddy the King, and Dirty Rich Modderfocker der Dritte.
In the space of a few hours, I heard more "Motherfuckers" than I hear in a week on the streets of New York. As for the realistic representation of Oral Sex, Kenneth Starr's multi-million-dollar revelations had already prepared me for that shock.
Designer Katrin Brack created a basic wooden stage-platform before the tiered seating. Sections of this slid back and forth, were raised, skewed, or even employed to suggest portals. At one point, a section was hoisted out to reveal a pool into which actors jumped, were pushed, or left for dead.
Ilse Vandenbussche's costumes ran the gamut from total nudity to Elizabethan. Prince Hal didn't waste his time with Falstaff in the stews of London. In this version, he is enjoying the favors of a transvestite in a slinky red gown and no undies—who is later an Archbishop in very smart red silk shoes.
Some powerful moments in the original plays are not neglected—nor parodied, notably Richard II's sorrowful soliloquy in prison. But Richard III's endless blatherings make the final section much too long, with steadily dwindling interest, even in attempted outrages.
The Siege of Harfleur is brilliantly evoked, with the wanton smashing of chairs and tables, even a baby-carriage, and body-parts and doll-heads flung here and there. Some flew into the audience and were promptly tossed back at the actors.
The Chorus of Henry V, dressed in a tux, relaxed in an easy-chair as he cooed into a mike the progress of events for his listeners.
Henry V's Crispin Crispian oration was impressive. But then he dropped his pants and mooned the French. Like Mel Gibson's Scots in Braveheart.
This was clearly designed as a teenage crowd-pleaser—but the Salzburg censors wanted to prevent them from seeing it.
There were few props, but lots of blood—and masses of pearls. Also Cocaine for Kings.
A charming note—or notes—was provided by an angel with a 'cello, accompanying the action.
I won't recycle more of my copious notes on the production. If you asked me, I could write a book… But this brief quotation from the text will give some idea of the odd mixture of German and English, poesie and vulgarity:
"O, ich bereue! I live for just one cause:/'Do the right thing!' Wenn nicht, so let me be/Verdammt… So Gott und Schicksal crush my nuts!"
And here's Richard Crookback cursing his Queen, the unfortunate Elizabeth: "You Modderfocking silly stupid cow;/Beschissne blasted bloody buggered bitch."
But you get the idea: A Long Way Off From Shakespeare.
This season, Salzburg's Youth Theatre will be presenting The Complete Works of Shakespeare. But this was scheduled before anyone had seen Schlachten, so it's not being offered as an antidote.
Take the Last Train From Seville!
Luca Ronconi's Fascist-Era Don Giovanni
Luca Ronconi's new Salzburg staging of Don Giovanni is a long way off from Seville. And even from Mozart and his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte.
MUSSOLINI'S TRAINS RUN ON TIME--Mozart's Don Giovanni is updated at the Salzburg Festival to 1920s Fascist Italy. Photo: Copyright © —Monika Rittershaus 1999. Instead, it seems inspired by the trendy Futurist Twenties in Fascist Italy. Indeed, it is apparently set in a huge railroad station—with immense vertical apertures for doors and windows.
Even the program is illustrated with a series of long corridors, echoing the vacant vistas of the basic set. This is not an abandoned train-station, for Doña Elvira [Barbara Frittoli]—handsomely garbed in the height of Art Deco fashion—is about to board a 1920s railway-coach.
This transportation-image suggests that the "train has already left the station" for the libidinous Don [Dmitri Hvorostovsky], trapped in his desperate cycle of laborious and joyless seductions.
Set-designer Margherita Palli also offers the suggestion that "Time is running out" for Giovanni. A pile of large dials is a recurrent image, as are great overhead clock-faces. At one point, the complex innards of an immense clockwork are revealed, also suggesting the inexorable grinding of the Mills of the Gods.
To astonish the impressionable Zerlina [Maria Bayo]—in Deco wedding-gown by designer Marianne Glittenberg—Don Giovanni comes for her in his sleek white convertible roadster.
Her groom Masetto [Detlef Roth] is discovered with rough buddies working on a 1920s auto. It could be stolen, and the venue a chop-shop.
When Leporello [Franz Hawlata] and the Don are in the cemetery, huge mounds of white skulls piled behind the empty doorways clue in spectators who may not have read the synopsis.
At stage-right, there is an immense globe, suggesting all kinds of things. Baroque star-charts are projected on it, among other images. It also opens to reveal the Statue of the Commendatore [Matti Salminen].
At the close, it revolves to disclose a glowing red Hell.
Although the predominate set-tones are grays, blacks, and browns—which may suit an atmosphere of gloom-and-doom—the score and the way the fable is unfolded, especially with the comic chorus coda, indicate a more colorful, sensuous, even sexy milieu. After all, the Don isn't the only one hungering for sex.
Some bold basic colors light the empty openings now and then, but they are also flat and joyless.
At the Don's dinner-party, he is scooting around in a motorized wheelchair. I heard no announcement that he'd hurt himself backstage, so I assumed he had contracted AIDS from his sexual adventures.
The props and serving of the dinner were rather tacky—which may also have been symbolic. But there were too many symbolic props and images, some of which did not clearly relate to the characters, plot, or score.
Hvorostovsky—especially as a dapper 1920s lady-killer Don—is the stuff of which matinee-idols are made. Karita Mattila, as Doña Anna, was also an elegant Art Deco image. Indeed, most of the principals not only sang their roles with passion and intelligence, but they played them stylishly as well.
Only Masetto and Don Ottavio [Bruce Ford] sang earnestly, but with little sense of character or commitment to the plot-actions ordained for them.
Loren Maazel conducted the Vienna Philharmonic. In several newspaper reports, he was identified as "the American conductor," even though his work has long been very well known in Vienna. Seldom does one read of "the British conductor John Eliot Gardiner." Maybe Maazel doesn't have an EU passport?
Zeitfluss 99—Theater der Klänge:
Not Exactly the Salzburg Fringe Festival!
With the arrival of Intendant Gerard Mortier in Salzburg, the interests and enthusiasms young audiences finally began to be addressed.The formal Festival had long been the preserve of the wealthy and powerful, with younger potential spectators shut out by dress-codes, snobbery, and steep ticket-prices.
The prices haven't come down, but there are now special prices for students. Even so, many young people and teens simply aren't interested in opera, no matter how trendy the productions.
Younger musical interests and avant-garde music and performance have fortunately come together in the Zeitfluss programs, in association with the regular Festival. Some of these have been even more cutting-edge than provocative Festival stagings.
Usually, the performances are on an intimate scale which makes them unsuitable for the Festival's major stages anyway. The Stadtkino, a small cinema, and the Residenzhof, the courtyard of the Archbishop's Palace, are favored venues.
George Lopez's Traumzeit und Traumdeutung, however, was scheduled up in the Alps, on the Kitzsteinhorn. Salzburgers have been blowing long Alpenhorns up there for centuries, so why not a musical novelty now?
Salzburg is, after all, the place where "The hills are alive with the sound of music." Lopez's prospective auditors were advised to wear mountain-hikers' garb. After riding the Kaprun Glacier Railway, they still had a 1 1/2 hour hike to the site.
One ensemble which certainly ought to have an American Tour is the Chor der Schreienden Männer. This youthful Finnish male choir specializes in lusty, almost shouted, renditions of various pretentious National Hymns.
Other novelties included Giorgio Battistelli's Experimentum Mundi—Opera di musica immaginistica. With Bruno Ganz as the Speaker, this work encompassed video, 5 women's voices, and 16 handworkers with grindstones, saws, hammers, anvils, and other basic tools.
Granular Synthesis brought its production of POL/Version 2.0. This was a premiere of Techno-Music-Theatre, with light, sound, and a "Synthetic Natural Catastrophe."
Other music-performance innovators included American Alvin Lucier, Salvatore Sciarrino, Uri Caine, and Einar Schleef. Although on this side of the Atlantic, young audiences might well prefer a Rap Session, the Salzburg performances were thronged. That may have something to do with the superior quality of their educations and cultural experiences?
Code der Gefühle:
A New Festival Theme
Intendant Gerard Mortier—from his first days in charge of the Salzburg Festival—made it clear that he intended to establish a serious, even scholarly, counterpart to the fest's impressive productions of opera and theatre.The idea of having a Festival Theme seems to have emerged initially at the Bregenz Festival. Dramaturgs, directors, and designers—who have closely analyzed scores and librettos of classics and modern works—often discover important social and cultural resonances in the productions which they'd like to discuss with audiences.
Increasingly, the more serious festival-goers also want to know more about the works they are seeing, the reasons for certain aspects of productions, the historical contexts of the operas and dramas, and their possible significance today.
This past summer—with Goethe's 250th Birthday the occasion for stagings of two different operas based on Faust—Rüdiger Safranski discussed Faust and Evil, for instance.
Paul Griffiths, known as a music critic for the New Yorker, shared his thoughts on Luciano Berio's new opera, Cronaca del Luogo. Elizabeth Bronfen analyzed Don Giovanni's Deadly Love-Games.
Nike Wagner—great-grand-daughter of the Master and possible candidate to direct the Bayreuth Festival—discussed quite a different subject: Lulu, or the Lolita-Syndrome.
A most provocative discussion was provided by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth and the former Federal President, Richard von Weizsäcker. They permitted themselves a fairly wide-ranging area: Art. Life. Politics.
American Friends' Symposia:
More Themes & Discussions for Opera-Lovers
Recently, American admirers of opera in grand, innovative productions have become an increasingly visible and active presence at the Festival. The foundation of the American Friends of the Salzburg Festival has done much to facilitate this.Previously, there had been no audience-organization similar to the Society of the Friends of Bayreuth to focus attention on the work of the Festival and to help ensure its subsidy.
Together with the associated International Festival Society, the American Friends promote patronage, understanding, and appreciation.
Alberto Vilar, an American investment-specialist, is a mainstay. And he has been giving a million dollars per year to the Festival! This past summer, his smiling face greeted audiences in every festival program, as he explained his generosity and his hope that others will join him in supporting it.
Two free symposia and one round-table were organized by the Friends this summer. Ernest Fleischmann moderated a conductors' round-table. Among others, Michael Gielen, Zubin Mehta, and American Kent Nagano were invited. Nagano notes he is often asked his opinion about Japanese music, and he has to point out that he is essentially a Californian.
Fleischmann also chaired a discussion about modern stagings of opera in the Donald Kahn Room of the Grosses Festspielhaus. He was fortunate to have Hildegard Behrens, Robert Marx, Peter Mussbach, and TV opera-producer Brian Large on hand.
The topic was phrased: The Director—Creator or Composer's Advocate. Behrens, who has been asked to do some fairly dangerous—or ridiculous—things by opera stage-directors, was very amusing about some experiences. But she was careful not to name the directors. Insiders, however, could guess the productions and directors in question.
Brian Large's adventures in video-taping major and historic productions were even more revealing. Peter Mussbach—whose unusual staging of Busoni's Doktor Faust was a Festival highlight—suggested one could be both creative and essentially true to the composers' vision.
DOKTOR FAUST HALLUCINATES--Thomas Hampson in Busoni's surreal operatic version of Goethe's Faust at the Salzburg Festival. Photo: Copyright © —Ruth Walz 1999. The shadow of Goethe hung over the subsequent discussion, lead by Marx. Focusing on Doktor Faust, Paul Griffiths, Thomas Hampson, Gerard Mortier, and Nagano took a very close look at Busoni's reworking of the Faust legend.
Next Summer in Salzburg:
In addition to performances of the almost eternal Jedermann, Achim Freyer's highly praised Zauberflöte will return to the Salzburg Festival next summer.Four of the new productions projected for opera-lovers will focus on classic themes: Glück's Iphigenie en Tauride, Mozart's Idomeneo, Berlioz' Les Troyens, and Offenbach's La Belle Helene.
Confirming the festival's profile of cutting-edge innovation in design and staging of opera, Herbert Wernicke will direct and design both the Offenbach operetta and The Trojans.
The equally inventive team of Ursel and Karl-Ernst Hermann will share design and directing duties on Idomeneo, It will be conducted by Michael Gielen, noted for far-out productions when he was in charge of the Frankfurt Opera.
For Iphigenie, the much-admired Ivor Bolton will conduct. Claus Guth is scheduled to stage, with designs by Christian Schmidt.
The remaining three new stagings will be of operas dealing with later periods than the Classical World. But they will all also have outstanding Post-Modernist directors and designers.
Klaus Michael Grüber will stage Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, with Eduardo Arroyo designing. Claudio Abbado is to conduct this production, as well as the new Così fan tutte. This Mozart delight will be designed by Reinhard von der Thannen, with staging by Hans Neuenfels.
The Salzburg Festival's favorite Wunderkind director, Peter Sellars, will return to stage a world premiere. This is Kaija Saariaho's Clemence—L'amour de loin. Kent Nagano will conduct, with stage-designs by George Tsypin, Sellars' longtime partner in provocative productions.
Meanwhile Over at the Mozarteum:
Sir Roger Norrington and Schumann
In May 2000, Sir Roger Norrington and the Camerata Academica Salzburg—of which he is leader/conductor—will present a weekend of Begegnung with the composer Robert Schumann at the Mozarteum.The previous Camerata conductor, Sandor Vegh, began these "Meetings" with celebrated—but possibly misunderstood or misinterpreted—composers in 1995. Sir Roger has himself had success with such Encounters, or Experiences, in London and Paris.
Following the recent Camerata examination of Brahms' Symphonies, this coming May, Schumann's Symphonies 1 through 4 will be introduced, discussed, rehearsed, and performed in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum. Other Schumann works will also be presented.
Norrington's special interest in such concerts is to strip away the "improvements" and romanticism which have changed composers' original works. He returns to original scores and orchestral instrumentation.
At a press-conference on the terrace of the Mozarteum last July, he pointed out that most of the symphonies of Schumann's and Beethoven's time were not written for immense orchestras nor for huge philharmonic halls, but for small concert halls and chambers. Venues similar to the Mozarteum's Grosser Saal—which seats only 797 people.
The Great Hall is an ivory-and-gold neo-baroque jewel-box, in the Central European semi-Modernist style known as Jugendstil. It has a fine organ with a splendid golden organ-case, as does the smaller Wiener Saal, which seats 200.
The foyers and hallways of the Mozarteum are handsomely decorated with Jugendstil reliefs and paintings, representing various aspects of music. But these concert halls and corridors are not only for the admiration of tour-groups.
They are in regular use for important vocal, piano, and orchestral concerts—some in the framework of the Salzburg Festival. The chambers are also in demand for recordings and video productions.
Mozarteum students also use them for rehearsals and concerts. But it is important to make the distinction between the International Mozarteum Foundation and the Austrian Mozarteum University.
Until 1979, the Mozarteum Academy of Music and Dramatic Art was housed in the gracious 1910 tract of the Mozarteum Foundation—or Stiftung. When it was raised to the status of a university and moved into a huge concrete Post-Modernist complex, confusions began to arise.
Unfortunately, the new building always had user-unfriendly problems. It was very easy to get lost. I was once late for an interview with the late opera intendant and Mozarteum Professor, Dr. Rolf Liebermann, because I couldn't find his door.
And the air-conditioning wasn't right. People were having bronchial problems. So the university building has had to be closed. This summer, some people were wary of attending concerts in the Mozarteum Great Hall because of this unwelcome news.
The Mozarteum and its two halls are in the best of health. There is no connection—either structural or administrative—with the University complex.
Actually, as Mozarteum press-officer Dr. Margit Skias points out, the Foundation is responsible for even more Mozart-related properties. These include Mozart's Birthplace, Mozart's Dwelling, Mozart's Magic-Flute Cottage, and the Mozart Memorial in St. Gilgen.
Its primary mission is not training music-students but in collecting, preserving, classifying, and studying all kinds of materials relating to Mozart and his work. Mozart research is very important, and the Mozart Library and Archives at the Mozarteum are unique.
Nonetheless, the Mozarteum does work closely with the Mozarteum University in developing and presenting concerts and presentations. It also periodically issues special Mozart recordings by outstanding artists. As well as definitive scholarly publications.
The Mozart Wohnhaus has recently been completely restored, with adjoining chambers for enjoying Mozart sound, film, and video recordings. The range of the offerings is amazing—and you can see and hear them free!
There is also an attractively designed book and gift-shop and a charming garden-courtyard. Here I waited while my friend Sari—who'd come all the way from Budapest for just two days to savor Salzburg—was reveling in historic Festival productions of Mozart operas.
Mozart-smitten Japanese outnumbered Europeans four-to-one, both inside and in the garden. The Geburtshaus, the Wohnhaus, and the Mozarteum must be three of the most photographed Musical Monuments in the world.
Not only do music-loving Nipponese strive to take photos of Mozart Memorials. They—and major Japanese corporations—also donate generously to the preservation of the Foundation's buildings and for the furtherance of its mission of collection, research, interpretation, and performance.
For more information about the Schumann Encounters, the Mozarteum's Mozart-Woche, and other concerts, exhibitions, and activities in its several Mozart-related venues, phone: 011-43-662-873154. Or write the International Mozarteum Foundation, Mozart-Wohnhaus, Theatergasse 2, Postfach 156, A-5024 Salzburg, Austria. A website is being created and will soon be on-line.
The Salzburg Marionettes:
Wooden Opera-Acting as High Art!
Anyone who has seen the Salzburg Marionettes perform Mozart's masterpieces in miniature knows how remarkable they are. Wooden they may be, but their movements are often more supple and musically-coordinated than those of some opera stars.Usually, I try to take in a matinee or two, but there was so much to do in Salzburg this past season, it was impossible. You cannot photograph the Moon eclipsing the Sun—the Total Finsterness—and simultaneously watch a puppet Queen of the Night try to do the same to Sarastro.
Anyway, the Salzburg Marionettes are coming to New York in a few months. See them at the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College. It's closer and cheaper than a trip to Salzburg!
They'll bring their Don Giovanni, Magic Flute, and Figaro, but for only one performance of each, 18-20 February 2000.
New Classical CDs:
Every summer, I make the rounds of Hospitality Suites of major recording companies during the Salzburg Festival. One is always gladly greeted, but, sadly, fewer companies are represented now.Deutsche Gramaphone Gesellschaft not only welcomes the press, but also provides critics with yellow fans and even yellow ponchos. It often rains in Salzburg, but it can be sweltering inside some venues. So these are very handy.
DGG and other leading firms present their most recent opera and classical CDs. Often, there are press-conferences with noted artists and conductors to discuss their current work and recordings.
Thomas Hampson is a very intelligent charmer. Maxim Vengerov's enthusiasm for composers and music he is exploring is infectious. Elisabeth Leonskaya's insights into her repertoire and her interpretations are shared with thoughtful intensity.
I must go to Ireland to the Wexford Opera Festival and the Dublin Festival next week, so I do not have time to comment on the CDs I received in Salzburg at this time. But I at least want to list them.
Obviously, some major companies are not represented at all—or minimally. The reason for this is that their reps in Salzburg suggested I get their new releases from their New York offices. Rather than have to mail them back from Austria.
This seems a good idea, but I haven't had time since my return to find out who and where to call. And, as collectors know, when European releases cross the Atlantic, they undergo a sea-change. Most arrive on these shores under the banner of an affiliated company with a different name.
FROM DGG:
DER ROSENKAVALIER/Richard Strauss. Herbert von Karajan conducting Vienna Philharmonic/1960. This is but one of the now extensive series of archival releases of historic Salzburg Festival performances, known as Festspiel Dokumente. Among its stars: Lisa della Casa, Otto Edelmann, Sena Jurinac, Hilda Güden, Erich Kunz. Mono: #453-200-2.THE RAKE'S PROGRESS/Igor Stravinsky. John Eliot Gardiner conducting London Symphony Orchestra & Monteverdi Choir/1999. Principals: Ian Bostridge, Deborah York, Bryn Terfel, Anne Sofie von Otter, Anne Howells. #459-648-2.
ROMANTIC ECHOES/Richard Strauss/Antonin Dvorák/Fritz Kreisler. Gidon Kremer, violin & Oleg Maisenberg, piano/1999. #453-440-2.
FROM EMI:
RACHMANINOV VESPERS/Sergei Rachmaninov. Stephen Cleobury & Choir of King's College, Cambridge/1999. #5-56752-2.VERDI PER DUE/Giuseppe Verdi Duets. Angela Gheorghiu & Roberto Alagna. Claudio Abbado conducting Berlin Philharmonic/1998. #5-56656-2.
OPERETTA ARIAS. Thomas Hampson—from Emmerich Kálmán to Carl Zeller. Franz Welser-Möst conducting London Symphony Orchestra/1999. #5-56758-2.
BRITTEN/Serenade/O Waly/Hunting Fathers/Cromwell. Ian Bostridge. Bamberger Symphoniker & Britten Sinfonia/1998. #5-56871-2.
WONDERFUL TOWN/Leonard Bernstein. Thomas Hampson/Kim Criswell/Audra McDonald et al. Sir Simon Rattle conducting Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/1999. #5-56753-2.
FROM TELDEC:
BACH 2000/Collected Works of Johann Sebastian Bach. To salute the New Millennium and celebrate the 250th Birthday of the Kantor of Leipzig's Thomaskirche, Teldec has collected outstanding interpretations of his works by major conductors, soloists, choirs, orchestras, and ensembles. The result is a big box of 153 CDs, plus a 250-page illustrated reference-book and a bonus CD.Obviously, this cannot be the Complete Collected Works of Bach, for his widow sold invaluable manuscripts as waste-paper. Musical tastes were changing. If Felix Mendelssohn had not championed a rediscovery of Bach's music, even more manuscripts might have been recycled as "note-paper."
In my Salzburg Teldec Bach 2000 Box, I found a sampling of the CDs. These include an Introductory CD and 7 discs from Volume Seven: 1—Motets/BWV 225-230, 2-Chorales/BWV 253-301, 3-Chorales/BWV 302-342, 4-Chorales/BWV 343-388, 5-Chorales/BWV 389-438, 6-Sacred Songs, 7-Chorales, Quodlibet &. #3984-25712-2.
This is a remarkable and clearly costly undertaking, obviously requiring outstanding scholarship, encyclopaedic knowledge of existing recordings, and the ability to enlist major Bach interpreters for the project.
DIE BRAUTWAHL/Ferruccio Busoni. "Musical-fantastical comedy" based on a Tale of E. T. A, Hoffmann. Daniel Barenboim conducting Staatskapelle Berlin/1999. #3984-25250-2.
HARMONIE-MESSE/TE DEUM/Joseph Haydn. Das Alte Werk Series. Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting Concentus Musicus Wien/1999. #3984-21474-2.
CHOPIN PIANO CONCERTOS. Elisabeth Leonskaya, piano. Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting Czech Philharmonic/1999. #3984-23449-2.
DEUTSCHE VOLKSLIEDER/Johannes Brahms. Stephen Genz, baritone. Roger Vignoles, piano/1999. #3984-23700-2.
OHANN STRAUSS IN BERLIN/Selections. Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting Berlin Philharmonic/1999. #3984-24489-2.
DON JUAN/VIER LETZTE LIEDER/TOD UND VERKLÄRUNG/Richard Strauss. Deborah Voigt, soprano. Kurt Masur conducting New York Philharmonic/1999. #3984-25990-2.
BELLEZZA VOCALE/Opera Duets. Jennifer Larmore & Hei-Kyung. Jesús López Cobos conducting Münchner Rundfunk Orchester/1999. #3984-22801-2.
NO TENORS ALLOWED/Baritone & Bass Duets. Thomas Hampson & Samuel Ramey. Miguel Gómez-Martínez conducting Münchner Rundfunk Orchester/1999. #0630-13149-2.
DISTANT LIGHT/VOICES/Péteris Vasks. Gidon Kremer, violin. Kremer ATA Baltica Ensemble/1999. #3984-22660-2.
FROM ORF—KOCH/SCHWANN:
BREGENZ FESTIVAL. It is but one of an impressive series of recordings made by Austrian Radio-TV of major festival stagings of neglected or forgotten operas.]FRANCESCA DA RIMINI/Riccardo Zandonai. Fabio Luisi conducting Vienna Symphony/1994. #3-1368-2. [Loney]
Copyright © Glenn Loney 1999. No re-publication or broadcast use without proper credit of authorship. Suggested credit line: "Glenn Loney, New York Theatre Wire." Reproduction rights please contact: jslaff@nytheatre-wire.com.
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