Philharmonia Chor Wien
The Philharmonia Choir of Vienna was formed in 2002 on the initiative of Gerard Mortier and initially took its name from the projects in which it was involved: the Ruhrtriennale Choir and the Baden-Baden Festival Choir. Since 2006 it has operated as an independent organization under the name of the Philharmonia Choir of Vienna. During its early years it worked with Claudio Abbado, Marc Minkowski and Kent Nagano among others in Baden-Baden, at the Ruhrtriennale, at the Bremen Music Festival, in Reggio Emilia and in Ferrara in a wide range of works that included Die Zauberflöte, Don Giovanni, Tannhäuser, Parsifal, L’Arlésienne and Jörn Arnecke’s Unter Eis. More recently the Choir has appeared in Baden-Baden in Der Rosenkavalier and Elektra under Christian Thielemann, Der Freischütz and Faust under Thomas Hengelbrock, Mefistofele under Stefan Soltesz, Manon Lescaut, Tristan und Isolde, Tosca and Parsifal under Simon Rattle and Otello under Zubin Mehta.
The Philharmonia Choir of Vienna made its Salzburg debut at the 2010 Whitsun Festival in Mozart’s Betulia liberata under Riccardo Muti, returning the following Whitsun for Mercadante’s I due Figaro, also under Muti, in a production later seen in Ravenna, Madrid and Buenos Aires. At the Summer Festival the Choir has been heard regularly since 2013, appearing in productions of Falstaff under Mehta, Don Giovanni under both Christoph Eschenbach and Alain Altinoglu, Faust under Alejo Pérez and L’italiana in Algeri under Jean-Christophe Spinosi. It has also been heard in concert performances of operas under Roberto Abbado, Marco Armiliato, Paolo Carignani, Patrick Fournillier, Michele Mariotti, Riccardo Minasi and Daniele Rustioni, most recently in Les Pêcheurs de perles and Lucia di Lammermoor.
Other recent projects have included the world premiere of Arnulf Herrmann’s Der Mieter at the Frankfurt Opera, Les Contes d’Hoffmann with Les Musiciens du Louvre under Minkowski in Bremen and Baden-Baden, Rigoletto with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg under Gustavo Gimeno in Paris and Luxembourg, Lohengrin at the Salzburg Landestheater, Robert Wilson’s production of Handel’s Messiah (in Mozart’s adaptation) under Minkowski at the 2020 Mozartwoche Festival and subsequently in Paris and Geneva and Johannes Kalitzke’s film opera Jeanne d’Arc at the 2020 and 2021 Carinthian Summer Festivals. The Choir has appeared regularly at the St Margarethen Opera Festival, most recently in Carmen.
Also in demand as a concert choir, the Philharmonia Choir of Vienna continues to appear under the musical direction of its founder, Walter Zeh.