MUNICH OPERA FESTIVAL 2010 JUNE 24 – JULY 31

Tosca Puccini June 28, July 2, 7, 10, 15 and 19 — festival première Medea in Corinto Mayr June 29 Roberto Devereux Donizetti June 30, July 4 Don Giovanni Mozart July 3, 6 and 8 Dialogues des Carmélites Poulenc July 9 and 13 The Tragedy of the Devil Eötvös July 12 Le nozze di Figaro Mozart July 14 and 17 Don Carlo Verdi July 18 and 22 The Silent Woman Strauss July 20, 23, 26 and 30 — festival première L’elisir d’amore Donizetti July 21, 24 and 27 Così fan tutte Mozart July 23 and 26 Lohengrin Wagner July 25 and 29 Tannhäuser Wagner July 28 and 31

Ballets, Concerts, Opera for all

Angela Denoke & Band in concert July 25

Recitals Diana Damrau July 4 Anja Harteros July 11 Krassimira Stoyanova & Vesselina Kasarova July 20 Agnes Baltsa July 24 Jonas Kaufmann July 30

Remdoogo Schlingensief June 24, 26 and 27 Ship of Fools Ronchetti June 29, July 6, 13 and 20 Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley July 2 Intrigo Internazionale ( K.492 ) Müller / Rinnert July 7, 8, 9 and 11 In Art Dreams Come True Kozyra July 14 Golgotha Cohen July 17 and 18 About us! Sharp July 22, 23, 24 and 25

Tickets / Information Bavarian State Opera Box Office Marstallplatz 5 Germany – 80539 Munich T +49.(0).89.21 85 19 20 festspiele@st-oper.bayern.de www.staatsoper.de

Festival Partner

Bavarian State Opera DARE TO BE DIFFERENT

By the Editor

Harold Wilson’s oft-quoted remark, ‘A week is a long time in politics’, seldom surfaces in the operatic world, and for good reason: events here have a habit of unfolding rather slowly. Even two weeks is usually a short time in opera, but things have been moving unusually fast at Glimmerglass Opera in upstate New Yo rk, which, barely a fortnight after disclosing that Michael MacLeod would be stepping down as general and artistic director after five years in the post, appointed his replacement. Just in time for this Festivals issue deadline, it can be revealed that Glimmerglass’s next general and artistic director will be Francesca Zambello. (No reason was given for MacLeod’s departure after five years, but as he is a man who survived ten years running John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir, we have to wonder what went wrong here.)

Adding to the sense of urgency, the original press release announcing MacLeod’s departure said that the new director would be planning the 2011 season. That’s not a long time away in operatic terms. MacLeod won’t actually leave until the end of this summer’s festival, and Zambello is not due to start officially until September, so given that she has a number of productions to direct—including the small matter of San Francisco Opera’s Ring in June 2011, and her latest musical, Rebecca, in London next spring—one hopes that many of the plans are actually already in place. The test will be whether Glimmerglass in 2011 continues to show the British bias of which MacLeod has been accused, or begins to project a more American perspective.

Zambello has been after a job such as this for some time; she was on the list of possible candidates for ENO a few years ago, and is said to be have been considered for New York City Opera when that company tied its ill-fated knot with Gerard Mortier. If she can be persuaded off the directorial treadmill on which she has been running of late, this appointment could be very good news. She has done some of her best work at small festivals (Wexford, for example), and it is often forgotten that in the 1980s, before she was an internationally known stage director, she enjoyed success as artistic director of the Skylight Opera Theatre in Milwaukee. Commenting in the Wall Street Journal on Zambello’s appointment, the president of Glimmerglass’s board, Sherwin Goldman, said that Zambello would soon be announcing a ‘major overhaul’ of the festival. Asked to elaborate, he added, ‘I think some exciting breakthroughs of new ways to consider how to produce a festival … Everything’s on the table.’ So how should a festival look?

Some of the events featured in this Festivals issue point to possible options. The future Salzburg Festival under Alexander Pereira (see overleaf) will, he says, promote new work: ‘I want one world premiere per year … If people see we are doing a new piece every year, other festivals will want to follow us.’ Few festivals enjoy the high international profile of Salzburg, so it is important that most keep in touch with their local roots—and Evans Mirageas (see pp. 20-28) is certainly doing that in Cincinnati, while also boosting his company’s wider profile. Perhaps the most exciting discoveries of the summer will come in Bregenz, where David Pountney is putting the spotlight on Mieczysław Weinberg (see pp. 13-19)—brave programming for that particular corner of Austria. However Zambello decides to shape Glimmerglass, she is bound to move it further away from its old model of being an outpost of NYCO, and rightly so: festivals can—and should—dare to be different.

Opera, Festivals 2010

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