A glance through the long history of Dresden reads like a Who’s Who of western music. Schütz, Telemann, Handel, Hasse, Bach, Gluck, Porpora, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven all performed here. It’s where Weber wrote Der Freischütz, Wagner Lohengrin. Robert and Clara Schumann found happiness here. Tchaikovsky and Dvořák conducted in the city, as did Richard Strauss, Fritz Busch, Karl Böhm and Kurt Masur. And Giuseppe Sinopoli, Marek Janowski, Bernard Haitink, Christian Thielemann and Michael Sanderling have all added their considerable lustre to the city’s reputation as a mecca for music-lovers.
Anyone considering a visit in 2019 will find an abundance of good music to savour: grand opera at the Semperoper, symphonies and concerti from the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, festivals large and small and a civic choral tradition that stretches back 800 years.
The grim shadow of Dresden’s appalling suffering at the end of World War 2 was long ago replaced by a determination to put culture once again at the heart of the city’s life, with landmarks obliterated by Allied bombing painstakingly rebuilt. The Semperoper, for instance, was reopened in 1985, on the 40th anniversary of its destruction (appropriately with a performance of Der Freischütz) and today hosts a programme of top-rank productions, including Tosca, Don Giovanni, Les Huguenots and Die Zauberflöte in the 2019 season.
The Dresden Philharmonic has a new home within the Kulturpalast am Altmarkt, a building that will be celebrating its own 50th anniversary in 2019. When it was opened in 1969 the Kulturpalast was the largest venue in the communist German Democratic Republic. Today, the heritage-listed building has been redesigned as a modern palace of the arts, featuring a spacious concert hall for the Philharmonic, a library and a cabaret theatre.
In 2005, the rebuilt Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) was finally reopened in all its baroque splendour, complete with its own choir and chamber choir, institutions that play their part in the musical life of Dresden. The church, topped with a golden cross given by the British people in a gesture of reconciliation, also presents an extensive concert series and an annual Bach festival.
The Kreuzkirche, in Dresden’s Altmarkt, is Saxony’s largest church, seating 3,000. It is home to a remarkable institution, the Dresden Kreuzchor boys’ choir, which has sung weekly vespers since 1371. These events, which attract thousands, are a key component in Dresden’s long musical heritage, featuring orchestral accompaniment and a varied programme of cantatas and a cappella repertoire.
All these venues, and many more, will play their part in the early summer Dresden Music Festival, a major month-long event that in 2019 will take “Visions” as its theme. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Staatskapelle Berlin and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra are just some of the international ensembles appearing within a programme of some 60 concerts, joined by soloists Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell and René Pape.
And 2019 will also mark the 300th anniversary of the extraordinarily lavish celebrations that took place after the wedding of Crown Prince Friedrich August, son of prince-elector Augustus the Strong, to Maria Josepha, daughter of the Austrian emperor Joseph I. Dresden was in full festive mode for four weeks, as a glittering parade of operas, tournaments, hunts and balls filled the month of September 1719. Dresden will mark this anniversary with the reopening of some state rooms in the restored Royal Palace. The Paradegamach suite – five rooms designed in the French style for the wedding – will open its doors in September.