Staatskapelle Dresden/Christian Thielemann - Großes Festspielhaus Salzburg, 29 March - 1 April 2013
The shadow of Herbert von Karajan still hangs over Salzburg. Nowhere more creepily than in this souvenir shop window.
After Simon Rattle's mildly experimental stewardship (by Salzburg standards), the Easter Festival baton passed this year to Christian Thielemann, who seems keener to preserve Karajan's tradition of tradition. 2013 focused on three big guns - Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner.
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You don't expect to find Christian Thielemann, guardian of alles that is deutsche, conducting Puccini. But Manon Lescaut is what he picked for his first new opera production since taking the Dresden reins, in the Stefan Herheim staging first seen in Graz.
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The German TV channel Das Erste last week aired a 45 minute documentary about Christian Thielemann in its Deutschland: deine Künstler series.
The programme approaches its subject on bended knee, dodging the more controversial aspects of his career. But there's loads of musical footage, together with some insightful comments from the likes of Renee Fleming, Rene Kollo and Albena Danailova of the Vienna Philharmonic (shot from an angle that makes it seem half its members are female).
Watch it here. Simplified German subtitles are available via the UT button in the corner.
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Not everyone is as sympathetic to Evgeny Nikitin as Munich's Intendant.
Christian Thielemann, conductor of the Holländer in which Nikitin was to appear, is fiercely critical of the singer, whose tattoo he only learned about on Friday night.
"A swastika is a no-go, and not only in Bayreuth," he told BZ. "It wouldn't be acceptable in Australia."
Thielemann, who claimed he doesn't like to see swastikas on stage either, said he didn't understand how Nikitin's agents could allow the singer to make the mistake.
And, no, he doesn't have any tattoos himself.
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It's fair to say orchestra director Jan Nast is pretty excited about Christian Thielemann taking the reins as principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden. Just look at the slogan on the Staatskapelle's website (above). Not to mention the 'Arrived' posters he's had plastered over Dresden bus stops (below).
Continue reading "Shall I compare thee to a microchip plant?" »
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Christian Thielemann is to conduct Tannhäuser at this year's Bayreuth Festival after last year's conductor Thomas Hengelbrock failed to sign a new contract with Festival management.
The presence of Germany's most popular conductor on the podium will undoubtedly reduce the risk of embarrassingly empty seats for Sebastian Baumgarten's 'controversial' (i.e.'crap') production, which debuted last year.
Thielemann is also down for a brand new production of Der fliegende Holländer. If he carries on with both next year, then the addition of Rienzi to his schedule will make him one of the busiest Bayreuth conductors since Heinz Tietjen in1934.
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The audience didn't seem to care much for the way the Staatskapelle Dresden played the opening number of their weekend concert, Busoni's Nocturne symphonique, granting it only tepid applause.
Neither it seems did conductor Christian Thielemann, who turned round and addressed them.
"You need to get exactly the right mood for this piece. It is one of the greatest works, so we will allow ourselves to simply play it again".
And so they did. This time round, reports Musik in Dresden, a more forceful approach created the right sort of nocturnal mood for the 8 minute starter. Followed by enthusiastic applause.
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Die Frau ohne Schatten - Grosses Festspielhaus Salzburg, 29 July 2011 (first night)
It now seems incredible that Strauss's musically richest and most colourful opera was dismissed as 'boring' by its first critics. Christian Thielemann coaxed the Vienna Philharmonic into a display of such aural opulence on its Friday premiere that it was easy to overlook the deficiencies of Christof Loy's meagre production.
Continue reading "Die Frau ohne Schatten opens in Salzburg " »
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Photo: © Siegfried Lauterwasser; Karajan Archiv
Salzburg Easter Festival have released initial programming details for 2013, when Christian Thielemann takes over as Artistic Director.
Parsifal will be directed by Michael Schulz, and the cast will include Johan Botha, Stephen Milling and Wolfgang Koch. Myung-Whun Chung will conduct one concert, and Evgeny Kissin will also appear. Big names go some way towards justifying high ticket prices, and so one Easter Festival tradition that appears unlikely to change is the starriness of its guest list.
Another help is the collaboration with the Staatskapelle Dresden, which has opened a useful cost-saving door for the Festival. Operas from 2013 onwards will be co-produced by Dresden Semperoper, where they will appear at a later date.
The spookily prescient photo above comes from the Festival website. Taken in 1982, shows Christian Thielemann (obvs in his Style Council phase) sitting next to the Festival's founder, Karajan, with the current Festival manager, Peter Alward, standing behind them.
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As widely predicted, Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden will be taking over the Berlin Philharmonic's Salzburg Easter Festival duties from 2013. The first year's opera will be Parsifal, to be followed by Arabella in 2014. The appointment runs to at least 2017.
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photo: Matthias Creutziger
It seems €1.2m for the orchestra and €135,000 for the conductor isn't enough for eight nights' work from the Berlin Philharmonic. After their not-so-surprise defection from the Salzburg Easter Festival to the more remunerative Festspielhaus Baden Baden from 2013, the race has been on to fill their shoes. Now it looks as if the obvious choice (and favourite of the highly influential patrons' association) may be about to sign a deal.
Continue reading "Christian Thielemann - Salzburg's new Easter Bunny?" »
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As filmed last night and shown on German TV earlier this evening - while Dresden awaited the arrival of the snowbound Renee Fleming, Anna Netrebko sang Heia, heia, in den Bergen from Kálmán's Die Csárdásfürstin with Christian Thielemann and the Dresden Staatskapelle. It's followed by Erwin Schrott with Pablo Ziegler's Rojotango.
Continue reading "Anna Netrebko, Einspringer of the Year - the video evidence" »
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Semperoper Dresden, 28 December 2010
German TV's big New Year's Eve event is the annual concert on the ZDF channel. For many years it was the preserve of the Berlin Philharmonic. But their escalating pay demands led to the baton being passed this year to the less financially-demanding Staatskapelle Dresden.
The change has not exactly gone smoothly. First, when Dresden's then-music director Fabio Luisi discovered ZDF wanted future (from 2012) director Christian Thielemann to conduct the concert, he resigned in a fit of pique.
Then a few weeks ago Thomas Hampson dropped out, unable to fit initial rehearsals into his schedule. That left Renee Fleming, pencilled in to sing extracts from Die lustige Witwe with Hampson's replacement Christopher Maltman. But the Beautiful Voice has been trapped all week in the New York snow, leaving her unable to fly to Germany for rehearsals.
Fortunately, Anna Netrebko has agreed to step in to the final rehearsal at the last minute - together with bonus hawtness in the form of hubby Erwin Schrott.
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Wiener Philharmoniker / Christian Thielemann - Théâtre des Champs-Élysées Paris, 23-28 November
Although London usually hosts at least one (and often three or four) high-quality classical concerts every single night, for some reason it's not on every orchestra's must-visit list.
Take the Vienna Philharmonic's full Beethoven symphony series with Christian Thielemann, recently immortalised on DVD
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Tony Pappano's widely-criticised £630,000 Royal Opera House salary looks a bit of a bargain compared with Christian Thielemann's pay as Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.
Recently released statistics reveal Thielemann earns €800,000 (~£680,000). This makes him Munich's highest-paid public servant, easily trumping Munich's mayor (€153,921).
What does Munich get for its massive outlay? For a start, Thielemann conducts around 10 separate programmes a year in around 40 concerts, including touring. Programmes have to be repeated three or four times to cope with demand. Plus there's all the usual music director stuff - programming, marketing and so on. That all adds up to a significant workload - but not quite a full time job. He still manages to fit in conducting slots with the Vienna Philharmonic and of course Bayreuth.
Pappano's workload is roughly 4 operas over 30 or so performances, which sounds less onerous until you factor in rehearsal time and the greater length of an opera programme. On top of that, as de facto artistic director of Covent Garden, he bears a greater non-conducting burden than many music directors. Pappano too finds time for the odd guest conducting slot, TV series, etc - not to mention heading the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia orchestra.
But at this level, it's not about the hours spent at the rockface. It's about quality - natural talent, sweat-honed skill and most of all, inspiration. Bureaucrats are interchangeable. Abundantly gifted conductors are few and far between.
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Munich Philharmonic / Christian Thielemann / Renée Fleming - Gasteig Munich, 24 October 2010
Making the most of my time in Munich, I squeezed in a final concert at 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning. The Munich Philharmonic is so popular that most of its concerts are repeated twice, with a large proportion of the seats filled by subscribers. That’s nearly 8,000 tickets per programme – who said classical music is dying?
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Bayreuth's Dorst/Thielemann Ring spins to an end later this month, after which Bayreuth takes a Ring-rest for a couple of years.
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More Ring, more of the same curiously unengaging Tankred Dorst production, which looks as if it was dug out of a box marked 1975 somewhere in the former Democratic Republic. Even so, I was a little shocked at the amount of booing which greeted the frail-looking octagenarian as he took the stage after the final act. It was far outweighed by applause, but unexpected nevertheless.
Continue reading "The Bayreuth Ring: Siegfried and Gotterdammerung" »
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Das Rheingold / Die Walküre - Bayreuther Festspielhaus, 27 and 28 July 2010
Tankred Dorst's Bayreuth Ring, now in its final year, has found few admirers. Yet there's been no booing so far this year - evidence that its crimes are those of tedium and incompetence rather than outright offensiveness.
Continue reading "The Bayreuth Ring: Das Rheingold and Die Walkure" »
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Poised behind a protective hedge of orange cabbage after a sublimely brilliant Die Walküre last night was Christian Thielemann, celebrating his 100th Bayreuth performance. No conductor since Felix Mottl, over a hundred years ago, has conducted as many.
A further cause for celebration was the announcement yesterday that Thielemann has finally signed a contract as artistic adviser to the joint Festival directors, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner. The appointment, anticipated since the Wagnerinas took over the directorship last year, has taken a while to formalise. It will give Thielemann a say in casting and conducting decisions, though the half-sisters will continue to have the final word.
On stage last night:
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