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Daniele Gatti and Kirill Gerstein offer fresh, invigorating takes on two warhorses with the Staatskapelle Dresden. 

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. 

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

Outstanding playing from soloist and Staatskapelle Dresden makes this a Prom to remember.

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.

If you like your Schumann symphonies the old fashioned way with lush, sonorous strings and heroic horns and brass, then Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden are for you.

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.

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

Renée Fleming swoons in Strauss' Four Last Songs, while having Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden are our guides in the Alpine Symphony. 

Christian Thielemann, the Staatskapelle Dresden and a star-studded cast compress Wagner's Ring cycle into a tale of Siegmund, Sieglinde, Hunding and Brünnhilde.

Pianist Kit Armstrong proved that prodigious talent and good taste can be found in the same artist, while Christian Thielemann disappoints in Strauss’ blockbusting Alpine Symphony.

A polished and deeply moving Beethoven Violin Concerto from Nikolaj Znaider was complemented by exquisite and vibrant performances of Max Reger and Richard Strauss from the Staatskapelle Dresden.

Thielemann and the Dresden Staatskapelle show that they are world class; Daniil Trifonov shows total mastery of his instrument in Mozart.

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.

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.

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

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.

Christian Thielemann’s repertoire is broader than is often made out, but not that much broader. At its heart are the four composers most associated with late Austro-Germanic Romanticism: Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Anton Bruckner.

“Der Sir”, they used to call him. The death of Sir Colin Davis has been a strikingly international event, and New York has been no exception. Over at Lincoln Center, Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic opened their latest subscription run with “Nimrod” from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a joint tribute to the British conductor and the people of Boston (another of Sir Colin’s haunts).

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.

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 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 success of Grafenegg, a relative newcomer to the Austrian summer festival scene, lies in the timing: held in the last week of August and first week of September, the festival has become an additional tour date for international orchestras engaged at the BBC Proms and Salzburg and Lucerne festivals, as well as a stop for German orchestras looking to take their first concert of the new season on

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.

La vénérable formation allemande a fait très forte impression dans la Septième Symphonie de Bruckner sous la direction de Tugan Sokhiev, après avoir accompagné une Sol Gabetta admirable dans Chostakovitch.

Entgegengesetzter hätten die zweite Werke am Programm der Sächsischen Staatskapelle Dresden auf ihrer Tournee nicht sein können: Schostakowitschs Erstes Cellokonzert mit Sol Gabetta und Bruckners Siebte Symphonie.

Los griegos decían que la verdad era a-letheia, desocultamiento, y así la Staatskapelle Dresden y Daniele Gatti hicieron brillar la poética y la audacia de Schumann, acomunados por su musicalidad.

Unter der Leitung von Daniele Gatti und mit dem Solisten Frank Peter Zimmermann bringt das Gastorchester aus Sachsen das Violinkonzert und die Dritte Symphonie von Schumann zu Gehör.

„Hier wird’s Ereignis – das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist‘s getan“ – mit diesen Worten endet Goethes Faust II, Mahlers Symphonie und damit auch die Amtszeit von Christian Thielemann als Chefdirigent der Sächsischen Staatskapelle.

Sous la direction de Marie Jacquot qui remplaçait Christian Thielemann, la phalange allemande a paru globalement trop machinale pour rendre l'effervescence de Don Juan et les couleurs de la Quatrième de Brahms.

Christian Thielemann leitet mit seiner letzten Wagner-Oper seinen Abschied als Chefdirigent der Staatskapelle Dresden ein.

Mit einer festspielwürdigen Besetzung führt Christian Thielemann die Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden zur der Wiederaufnahme der Meistersinger von Nürnberg an.

Erschöpft aber glücklich beendet Herbert Blomstedt Bruckners Sechste Symphonie, die wohl niemand so schnell vergessen wird...