Parsifal
Komponist Richard Wagner. Dichtung vom Komponisten.
Ein Bühnenweihfestspiel in drei Aufzügen (1882)
Musikalische Leitung
(2024: APR 04, 07, 10)
(2024: JUL 20, 23)
Inszenierung
Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Bayerischer Staatsopernchor und Zusatzchor der Bayerischen Staatsoper
Extrachor der Bayerischen Staatsoper
Silvester Gala
LEITUNG
Musikalische Leitung Christoph Gedschold
Moderation Juri Tetzlaff
Orchester Gewandhausorchester
BESETZUNG
Nixon in China
“In February 1972, the American president Richard Nixon went to China to meet Mao Zedong. In the context of the war in Vietnam and the cold war, this encounter marked a turning point in Chinese‑ American relations. John Adams, a major musical figure of the last forty years, made this event of contemporary history the subject of his first opera. Nixon in China tackles the political thaw instigated by ping-pong diplomacy, begun by the invitation of the American table tennis players by their Chinese counterparts, one year before the presidential visit. A mesmerising work in which the pulsations and repetitions typical of minimalism are combined with melodic lines of great lyricism. For its entry into the Paris Opera repertoire, this work has been entrusted to the director Valentina Carrasco, who underlines the importance and the mediating power of Chinese national sport in history.” -Opéra National de Paris
Salome
Richard Strauss | “Musical drama in one act Text by the composer after Oscar Wilde’s Drama Salome (1891) in a German translation (1903) by Hedwig Lachmann | In German with German and English supertitles | Playing time 1 3/4 hours | No intermission
When Salome had its world premiere in 1905, it marked the beginning of Richard Strauss’ operatic successes. Based on Oscar Wilde’s sensational tragedy, Strauss composed a musical drama rife with unleashed passion, whose worldwide success not even prudish censors could stop. Using one of the most scandalous stories in cultural history, whose origins lie in the New Testament, Strauss created a musical and stunning psychological profile of the unconscious, laying bare the conflict between sensuality and asceticism, between intoxication and loneliness, power and love.
Princess Salome lives in the decadent court of her mother, Herodias, and stepfather, Herod. Like a voice from another world, the prophet Jochanaan calls to her from his prison cell in the palace dungeon. She projects her sensual desires on to the very man who cannot be tempted by worldly pleasures. His disdain for her cements her plan: if she can’t have the man, then at least she can have his head on a platter. In her final monologue, which is a dialogue with the prophet’s decapitated head, is simultaneously an ecstatic and tragic love song: “If you had seen me, Jochanaan, you would have loved me.”
Never before had a composer set such passion and desire to music. With new, exciting ways of manifesting sound, Strauss cast the fiery temper and soulless depths of his eponymous character in thrilling music. Jochanaan’s prophecy is as haunting as Salome’s erotically-charged “Dance of the Seven Veils,” a scintillating dance that both fascinates and disturbs even today.” - Oper Leipzig