The opera was an adaptation of both books and premiered in June 2007 at the Bavarian State Opera as part of the
Munich Opera Festival.
Valli has also been associated with Germany for several years, and has performed at the Millennium festival in Berlin, the Frankfurt Alte Oper, the
Munich Opera Festival, the Hammoniale Festival in Hamburg, the Spring Festival at Darmstadt and at the Silver Jubilee celebrations of Pina Bausch's Wuppertal Dance Theatre.
Cultural highlights running from this month onwards include an Adolph Menzel exhibition, a CyTypically MunichCO exhibition, The
Munich Opera Festival and the high profile Kandinsky exhibition.
Bavarian National Ballet, July, 4, 14,
Munich Opera Festival, Bayerische Staatsoper Nationaltheater, Max-Joseph-Platz; 49 89 2185 1920, fax 49 89 2185 1903
Fast-rising Canadian baritone Elliot Madore made his debut at the
Munich Opera Festival in the new production of Pelleas et Melisande.
This summer's
Munich Opera Festival did not end, as has been the recent tradition, with Die Meistersinger, but instead Verdi's Falstaff.
A successful debut at last year's
Munich Opera Festival with Strauss's Elektra, for example, won him reengagement to conduct the same composer's Salome and Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail at future festivals.
This staging, from last summer's
Munich Opera Festival, had strong Canadian connections--with direction by Robert Carsen and featuring soprano Jane Archibald as Zerbinetta.
The result, seen during this year's
Munich Opera Festival in July, is a somber stage in battleship gray and gold leaf.
During this summer's
Munich Opera Festival, I witnessed eight productions on that stage, modernist in varying degrees, but all of them in striking visual contrast to their elegantly Neo-Classical surroundings.
Within the impressive list of 16 operas staged at this summer's
Munich Opera Festival, no fewer than four bore the controversial directorial stamp of America's David Alden, including his four-year-old production of Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades.