“The Game of the Mighty”, the title that Giorgio Strehler gave to two of his great Shakespeare productions in Salzburg, will be the annual motto of the Salzburg Festival 2009. “The Game of the Mighty” is a game played with the mighty as well, and a theatrical play about those in power. Just like Strehler, we do not wish to be “lawyers and accountants”, but we want our operas, plays and concerts to make their own impressions: human “parables, symbols and truths wrapped into one”. While reviewing epochs lost, we will find new utopias.
Luigi Nono, a central composer of this year’s opera program, spent his life exploring the ambiguous relation between power and the individual person. One motto might span all his works like a banner: “Beauty is not opposed to revolution” – this statement by Ernesto Che Guevara also provides the title for the prologue of his opera Al gran sole carico d’amore (In the Bright Sunshine, Charged with Love).
Al gran sole carico d’amore by Luigi Nono (1924–1990), the key work of this year’s opera program, is a great requiem for lost hope. Katie Mitchell will direct this grandiose masterwork of modern music theater, which will come to life at the Felsenreitschule. Ingo Metzmacher conducts the Vienna Philharmonic.
George Frederick Handel, whose anniversary dominates the year, premiered his oratorio Theodora in 1750. It explores the polar opposites of otherworldly renouncement and bodily lust that is certainly of this world and will be entrusted to “Director of the Year” Christof Loy; Ivor Bolton will conduct the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra; and the title role of the ascetic Christian martyr will be sung by Christine Schäfer, while American countertenor Bejun Mehta performs the role of the officer Didymus who desires her.
Christof Loy also takes charge of Joseph Haydn, the other great 2009 anniversary: his Armida with Annette Dasch in the title role and the equally impressive Michael Schade as Rinaldo returns to the program. The Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg is conducted by Ivor Bolton.
Gioachino Rossini adapted a Bible story for his Grand Opéra Moïse et Pharaon: the liberation of the Jews from their Egyptian bondage, in which the struggle for freedom manifests itself as a struggle of faith. This is exemplified in a “touching love story” between Anais, Moses’ niece, and Amenophis, the Pharaoh’s son. Riccardo Muti will be the music director for the production featuring Ildar Abdrazakov and Nicola Alaimo in the title roles. The Vienna Philharmonic performs; Artistic Director Jürgen Flimm directs.
With Così fan tutte, director Claus Guth completes his cycle of Mozart-Da Ponte operas. Torn between love and passion, security and self-abnegation, fidelity and betrayal, Miah Persson as Fiordiligi, Isabel Leonard as Dorabella, Topi Lehtipuu as Ferrando and Johannes Weisser as Guglielmo abandon themselves to the emotional chaos. Bo Skovhus as Don Alfonso and Patricia Petibon as Despina pull the strings in this dangerous game. Adam Fischer conducts the Vienna Philharmonic.
“Così fan tutte le belle! Non c’è alcuna novità,” they sing in Le nozze di Figaro: directed by Claus Guth, Gerald Finley and Dorothea Röschmann perform the roles of the Count and Countess in Mozart’s cosmos of human passions. Julia Kleiter is the new Susanna, Luca Pisaroni her Figaro and Marina Janková Cherubino.
And finally, Daniel Barenboim takes on the opera of liberation par excellence: Beethoven's Fidelio. Daniel Barenboim is supported by a brilliant ensemble of singers – including Waltraut Meier as Leonore and Simon O'Neill as Florestan – as well as the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which returns to Salzburg for these concert performances of Fidelio and its own concert series.