The Bayerische Staatsoper – in English, the Bavarian State Opera – is just about the biggest repertory house in the world. The sheer number of different productions – 43 for the 2015/6 season – makes it possible for them to provide something for everyone. For those seeking new thrills, there are seven new productions; for those who prefer old faithfuls, all the top ten operas are included. If it’s great singers you’re after, how about this for a list: Jonas Kaufmann, Anja Harteros, Bryn Terfel, René Pape, Petra Lang and Joseph Calleja are just six out of dozens of big name singers to tempt you into Munich’s National Theatre. And the picture is completed by a veritable battery of top flight conductors brought in by music director Kirill Petrenko.
Many will look to the new productions as their point of reference for what the house is capable of, and here also, the 2015-6 season strives for variety. It includes a newly written opera (South Pole), new Wagner and Verdi productions (Meistersinger and Ballo in Maschera), a taste of the French baroque (Les Indes Galantes), a little played Russian opera (The Fiery Angel) and the only opera by a composer mainly celebrated as a librettist (Mefistofile).
Arrigo Boito is perhaps best remembered for the libretti of Verdi’s late operas Otello and Falstaff. But Boito was also a composer in his own right and although he only completed one opera, it’s a darkly fascinating one: Bayerische Staatsoper are opening the season with their first ever production of Mefistofele, with bass star René Pape in the title role.
Long gone are the days when operatic subjects were limited to Greek gods and royal palaces: Miroslav Srnka’s South Pole demonstrates that today’s opera can take a subject from the unlikeliest walks of life. Srnka and librettist Tom Holloway tell the tale of the two attempts to reach the South pole by Roald Amundsen (which succeeded) and Robert Scott (which failed), seeking to understand the motivation to achieve the impossible for the sake of what is “just a white speck in the middle of a white landscape”. Kirill Petrenko conducts, Thomas Hampson and Rolando Villazón sing the two explorers.
Prokofiev’s 1919 The Fiery Angel isn’t exactly on the average opera-goer’s “most familiar pieces” list: it’s a dark story of obsession, hallucination and demonic possession which remains largely unperformed because of its difficulty: as Neeme Järvi has put it in an interview for Gramophone, “You need remarkable singers … and a great conductor of the symphonic repertoire who can make a symphony out of the opera – but in the opera house”. Vladimir Jurowski takes up the challenge, and he’s certainly got two great singers to help him in the shape of Evgeny Nikitin and Evelyn Herlitzius.
Opera’s most celebrated bad boy Calixto Bieito tackles one of the most successful Paris Grand Operas of the early nineteenth century: Halévy’s La Juive. What Bieito will make of the pot-boiling Eugène Scribe libretto can only be left to your imagination, but Halévy’s music is richly colourful and the vocal line-up is as appetising as you could ask for in this kind of repertoire. In 1835, the main roles were sung by two of the notable singers of the age, Cornélie Falcon and Adolphe Nourrit: in this production Roberto Alagna and Kristine Opolais will attempt to fill their shoes, with a supporting cast including Aleksandra Kurzak and John Osborn.