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Hasse’s Artaserse in Munich was a pasticcio using music from that work to tell the story of Wilhelmine von Bayreuth and to celebrate of Anja Silja. 

In a pasticcio of Hasse’s Artaserse and Ezio, director Balázs Kovalik and the students of the Theaterakademie August Everding stage the life of Wilhelmine von Bayreuth.

Re-imagining this opera with Prince Gremin as the show-stealer was no doubt a happy accident.

Of the many and varied operatic openings, that of La Traviata is one that I find increasingly demanding on an emotional level. The mournful harmonies and diaphanous scoring for strings that start off the prelude notoriously portray ill-fated Violetta moments before she dies of TB, returning in the final act as her destiny is about to be fulfilled.