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David Bösch directs a creative and thoughtful new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Semperoper in Christian Thielemann's final opera as Principal Conductor. 

The Dresden Music Festival public renew their love for Jan Vogler, who is joined by festival debutants from Parma. 

Katharina Thalbach offers a traditional staging at the Semperoper, with fine vocal performances led by Krassimira Stoyanova, Francesco Meli and Oksana Volkova. 

Collegium 1704 takes the Czech Baroque composer online, with impressive results.

John Osborn leads a very successful premiere of Peter Konwitschny's new production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots in Dresden

Saioa Hernández leads a solid cast in Dresden in a somewhat disappointing new production by David Bösch.

What brought real distinction and authenticity to the evening, as so often in this house, was the outstanding playing of the Staatskapelle conducted by Tomaš Netopil. From the start of the overture with its rapidly scurrying fugato for strings and pointed phrasing from the woodwind one felt the true sense of Smetana’s Czech inflected rhythms and harmonies

Christian Thielemann led a memorable performance of Strauss's chamber opera Ariadne auf Naxos with a strong cast in a new straightforward production by David Hermann.

With a plethora of theatre seats, stools and benches it was as if Willy Decker and Wolfgang Gussman had been elected ‘Chair-men of the bored”.

The third installment of Semperoper Dresden’s Ring des Nibelungen cycle ups the ante with an outstanding ensemble performance.

Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden orchestra are let down by sub-optimal singers in Willy Deckers chair-laden production of  Die Walküre. 

Wagner demands vocal resilience from the large cast of singers in Das Rheingold, but Willy Decker wants strong thigh muscles as well.

In a score that can be a Technicolor wallow, Jurowski’s sure sense of dramatic pulse and balance, encompassed the brash dance rhythms, religious grandeur, vivid tone painting and the extremes of dissonance.

Emily Magee was in glowingly refulgent voice as the 'damsel in distress', Euryanthe, in this concert performance of Weber's rarity. 

An exceptional musical performance was enhanced by a streamlined but ultimately moving staging in an evening of near perfection in Dresden.

Anna Netreboko chose to perform her first Elsa in Dresden with Christian Thielemann conducting.  It was a remarkable performance never to be forgotten.

For the centennial celebration of Max Reger’s death, American pianist Peter Serkin and Herbert Blomstedt travelled to Saxony, the composer’s birthplace, touring orchestras with his Piano Concerto in F minor.

In 12 highly dynamic and buoyant scenes, Alexander Ekman’s new ballet COW is at once theater, dance, social commentary and divine comedy. 

Torsten Fischer's Nazified production of Strauss' Daphne in the Semperoper Dresden may leave you confused, but it receives a solid performance. 

While there are jarring visual aspects to this production of Bizet's Carmen at the SemperOper, Dresden, this was an enjoyable performance which is a feast for the ears, if not the eyes.

From introspective Mahler to flowing Schumann, Claudio Abbado is remembered at a concert with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Dresden's Frauenkirche.

Taking a “transatlantic bridge” as their theme for the evening, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center featured music by Ravel, Gershwin, Korngold and Antheil. 

A modern, simple production of Simon Boccanegra at Dresden's Semperoper, doesn’t interfere with the action.  

Les Arts Florissants performs Monteverdi's Seventh Book of Madrigals with a sense of spontaneity and flare at the Dresdner Musikfestspiele.

Erika Sunnegårdh’s Salome impresses in a revival of Peter Mussbach's striking production at the Dresden Semperoper. 

Peter Konwitschny’s Tannhäuser at Dresden’s Semperoper dates back to 1997, making it relatively old for an opera production, and though I sense this may be its last revival, it is still modern and engaging.

Simone Young and the Dresdner Philharmonie make a formidable partnership. The orchestra play with such a wonderful sound, especially in the wind and brass sections, and the range of colours they conjure is incredible. And Young clearly revels in the orchestra’s technical facility, but still always bringing something extra, and never taking away from what the orchestra can do for themselves.

Verdi’s opera Macbeth is often considered less successful than his later operas, and considerably less so than his other two Shakespeare operas, Falstaff and Otello.

The genre of semi-opera is a peculiarly British one. Emerging from the courtly Masques during the restoration, the semi-opera served as an English operatic utterance, at a time where opera was emerging as one of the pre-eminent theatrical forms in Europe.

The Palais im Großen Garten in Dresden is an interesting place to perform classical music. It’s completely unlike any other concert venue, with its wholly dilapidated interior projecting an image of lost grandeur. In many ways this is perfect for a classical music concert, especially chamber music.

I often think you can tell the quality of an orchestra by looking at the back desks of its string sections, and the players on the fringes of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic play with as much vigour as those at the front; their joy in the music is both visible and audible. The result is a strong and complex string sound, well blended, but with a coolness you don’t get from most German orchestras.

Singing polyphonic music requires a specific sound. To be truly effective there must be a beautifully rounded and well blended choral sound, but at the same time the individual lines must be clearly decipherable within the overall texture. This is a balance that The Tallis Scholars seem to find effortless.

Whatever our relationship with music we often have moments in our lives where the thing we’ve always loved feels like little more than a habit, or worse still a chore. You go to a concert and sit through it, and you know in your head that the orchestra played well and that the soloists were excellent, but your heart remains unmoved.

Dating from 2008, the Semperoper’s current production of Rigoletto is quite intriguing. It’s set in what appears to be a swanky 21st-century Berlin apartment – industrial, sparse and effortlessly cool – and in many ways this is an interesting choice.

J.S. Bach didn’t write an opera, but if he had, it’d probably be the best opera in the world. Fortunately for us, he wrote the next best thing, his Mattäus-Passion, a work of such dramatic power, that even in the concert or church settings in which it is usually performed, its highly emotional narrative thread is still captivating.

Puccini is one of opera’s best loved composers. With so many popular titles to his name, it is somewhat surprising how infrequently his first great success, Manon Lescaut, is performed today. What makes this even more unusual is the opera’s universal appeal.

In the early years of the 20th century Puccini was a very happy man. His most recent opera, Tosca, was proving as successful as La Bohème, and the lucky composer was being summoned to opera houses throughout Europe for its premières. In the summer of 1900 Puccini attended the première performance of Tosca in London, and soaked in the atmosphere of Europe’s largest city.

Mozart wrote 20 operas during his relatively short life, the first being performed in Salzburg in 1767, when the composer was just eleven years old. However, it is Idomeneo, written and premièred when Mozart was the ripe old age of 25, which is usually considered to be his first mature opera.The opera takes place on the island of Crete immediately after the Trojan War.

The regular home of the Dresden Philharmonic, Dresden’s Kulturpalast, is currently being renovated, and as a result the orchestra is taking residence in a number of venues around the city, including the city theatre, and the renowned Frauenkirche. However, the majority of their concerts this season are taking place in the Albertinum, one of Dresden’s many art galleries.

Even in the world of opera, Ernst Krenek is far from a household name, but this Austrian composer was one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century, with an output encompassing symphonies, chamber works, ballets and, perhaps most significantly, operas.

The Staatskapelle Dresden is widely recognised as one of the best orchestras in the world, featuring in tenth place in Gramophone magazine’s 2008 article ranking the world’s 20 finest orchestras. This season the orchestra welcomes Christian Thielemann as its new main conductor, and this concert began his much anticipated Brahms cycle with his new orchestra.

There’s something relentlessly dark about Verdi’s Don Carlo. King Philippe and his son, the eponymous Don Carlo, are both very troubling characters, the former power-hungry and vengeful, the latter plagued by desire for his stepmother.

In his whole career as an opera composer Puccini only wrote one pure comedy, Gianni Schicchi, and even that forms part of his trilogy Il Trittico, of which the other parts could hardly be more tragic. However, La bohème is also a comedy in its own way, a comedy cut short by tragedy.

The Dresden Semperoper premiered a new production of Fidelio scarcely a month before the fall of East Germany. Much has changed in the intervening decade and a bit, but the Semperoper is still playing the same Fidelio. It doesn't take much knowledge of recent German history to understand why it was a sensation at the time.

Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783) was a renowned opera composer of the eighteenth century. As the Kapellmeister at the Dresden court from 1731 to 1763, he composed a large number of Italian operas and his fame spread all over Europe. His wife, the equally famous mezzo-soprano Faustina Bordoni (who also sang in Handel’s operas in London), starred in many of his operas.

It is customary in German-speaking countries to perform Wagner’s Parsifal on Good Friday, so it was quite a bold move for the Semperoper in Dresden to put on Tannhäuser instead, especially in Peter Konwitschny’s strongly anti-Christian production.

Le pianiste islandais interprète sans pause une série de pièces en mi (majeur ou mineur) de Bach, Schubert et Beethoven, avec de grandes qualités dans les nuances piano mais des forte trop uniformes.

Pour sa prise de fonction à la tête de l'orchestre dresdois, le chef britannique a dirigé un concert d'ouverture passionnant, notamment dans une Quatrième Symphonie de Brahms très réussie.