Hotel Metamorphosis Honoured with Four Awards
Salzburg Whitsun Festival Artistic Director: Cecilia Bartoli
Four OPER! Awards for the Opera Pasticcio HOTEL METAMORPHOSIS featuring music by Antonio Vivaldi
Cecilia Bartoli, Nadezhda Karyazina, Barrie Kosky and Gianluca Capuano personally accepted their awards on Monday evening at the Regensburg Theatre
KS Dr. h.c. Cecilia Bartoli, Artistic Director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, expressed her
gratitude after receiving the Award for Best Production of the Year 2025:
“I am absolutely delighted that the OPER! Awards jury decided to bestow not one, but four
prizes in different categories on our Salzburg production of Hotel Metamorphosis. This
illustrates that a musical theatre project can only become successful when it is collaborative
and when everyone works with the same passion and spirit of commonality. For me
personally, it is extremely rewarding to see that since 1999, when my first CD with opera
arias by Vivaldi was released, this composer has become a household name in the
international opera world. Having been brought back to our attention piece by piece, today
Vivaldi’s wonderful operatic music forms a natural part of playbills at repertory theatres and
major festivals all over the world. Moreover, I was particularly gratified to share the stage
with several generations of magnificent musicians in this production. It is they who
guarantee that the torch of our mission will not fade in days to come!”
The original jury statements:
HOTEL METAMORPHOSIS won
BEST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR 2025
“How to expand the repertoire without driving composers to burnout? The baroque era had
a clever answer to this question: pasticcios – the reassembling of existing arias, duets and
choruses with a few libretto adjustments into a new opera. It is a trick that still works today.
And it is especially effective when you have strong material from the compositions of
Antonio Vivaldi at hand, as well as an excellent directing team, outstanding singers and
musicians, then use this concentrated artistic power to tell a story connecting central
cultural myths with the present day. The OPER! Award for Best Performance goes to Hotel
Metamorphosis at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival.”
Nadezhda Karyazina was honoured as
BEST NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 2025
“It is, of course, a wonderful thing being able to shine, at a young age, in a major role at a
significant festival. But to go beyond that, to radiate authority and vocal brilliance in the
iconic part of Marfa in Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina – a sort of death-obsessed Russian
Erda usually reserved for older singers –, to garner rave reviews and applause at an event
like the Salzburg Easter Festival: that is a truly a special achievement! Just a few weeks
later, she repeated that feat as a substitute – chosen quite likely due to the earlier success –,
‘checking in’ as Minerva, Nutrice and Juno at the Hotel Metamorphosis in the same city for
the Whitsun Festival. She is, quite simply, overwhelmingly good: our Newcomer of the Year,
Nadezhda Karyazina.”
Barrie Kosky was honoured as BEST DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR 2025
“He is a director whose work is always very good, and frequently fantastic. This time, he did
even more than just direct: he played a decisive role in developing the plot of a cleverly
executed ‘instant opera’ that channelled the melodic genius of Antonio Vivaldi into a
modern, dramatised and philosophically seasoned narrative based on Ovid’s mythological
classics – all set within a transitory, temporary space. The audiences at the Salzburg
Whitsun Festival enthusiastically accepted his invitation to the Hotel Metamorphosis, where
he allowed four wonderful singer personalities to shine. For this reason, the OPER! Awards
Director of the Year is the one and only: Barrie Kosky.”
Gianluca Capuano was honoured as BEST CONDUCTOR OF THE YEAR 2025
“An Italian conductor who – in addition to organ, composition and conducting – also studied
philosophy in Freiburg is a rarity in itself. For several years now, he has been surprising the
classical music world both as the leader of his own vocal ensemble, Il Canto di Orfeo, and as
the chief conductor of Les Musiciens du Prince – Monaco with outstanding, historically
informed interpretations. In 2025, he delivered a compelling first at the Opéra de MonteCarlo, a performance of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold that combined authentic
orchestral sound, textual clarity and a keen sense for vocal lines. It was followed by another
sensation at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival with Hotel Metamorphosis – a new opera
pasticcio by director Barrie Kosky, consisting of compositions by Antonio Vivaldi, for which
our Conductor of the Year acted as lead curator: Gianluca Capuano.”
The 2026 Salzburg Whitsun Festival takes place from 22 to 25 May.
Under the title „Bon Voyage“, Artistic Director Cecilia Bartoli invites the audience to
Gioachino Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims. This production will be directed by Barrie Kosky.
View the other performances on this Whitsun weekend by visiting