Singer

Forget everything you think you know about Wagner! Kent Nagano, the Dresden Festival Orchestra, and Concerto Köln are setting new standards with their performance of the Ring cycle. For the first time ever, this monumental project is being heard in a historically informed interpretation. Just as in Wagner’s own day, the string players use gut strings; the wind instruments are reconstructed based on 19th-century models; the orchestra’s tuning is lower; and the text is at times declaimed rather than traditionally “sung.” Suddenly everything becomes intelligible — and at times it almost recalls the delivery of art song. Working with an international research team, Nagano has brought surprising insights to light. The result is striking. “Light and airy” is how Jan Brachmann described this Wagner in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; in particular, the winds impress “with sharper definition in their individual colors: they creak, belch, and grunt with a kind of unruly physicality.” With Götterdämmerung, the Ring comes full circle this summer. And once more we have the chance to experience Wagner’s music as he himself most likely heard it.

EPSG:4326

Dresden Festival Orchestra | Concerto Köln | Dresden Festival Choir of the Richard Wagner Academy | Kent Nagano | Soloists

KKL Luzern Concert Hall

“I don’t believe in the right to work; I prefer to believe that the greatest right of man is to do nothing,“ said Rossini. Angelina, his Cinderella, is far from that – she performs slave labour in her bankrupt stepfather’s family. How a prince, for whom the bank account and an army of servants work, gets her out of this precarious situation is a world-famous fairy tale from Charles Perrault to Disney. Rossini tells the story of the power of honest feelings to survive without the well-known miraculous elements, but there is one great miracle: love at first sight. Not at the ball, but when the prince, as a servant, inspects the potential brides in advance. Surrounding this is the madness of exalted dreams of ascent and terrible scenarios of descent, which drives Rossini’s characters forward just as much as the insane energy of his music. The young mezzo-soprano Itzeli del Rosario, who is a member of the Stuttgart ensemble since this season, makes her debut in the title role of Cinderella.

La Cenerentola

Stuttgart Opera

OSM Conductor Emeritus Kent Nagano leads a moving performance of Brahms’ A German Requiem, as it was presented in 1868 in Bremen, Germany. Making its debut at the OSM, this historic recreation includes excerpts from Baroque masterpieces such as Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Handel’s Messiah. These musical selections offer insight into Brahms’ artistic heritage and underscore his profound connection to the rich German musical tradition. This masterpiece invites deep contemplation on life and death, promising a truly exceptional musical journey.

“A German Requiem” by Kent Nagano

Place des Arts

Beethoven's freedom opera "Fidelio" was already on the program at the beginning of the season, a work that ends with an emphatic choral finale in which the humanistic convictions of its creator burst forth in powerful sound. And this also applies to his 9th Symphony, a work with which Beethoven, so to speak, embraces all of humanity. "All men become brothers," it says in Schiller's "Ode to Joy," which Beethoven used as the text for his magnificent finale. While people probably didn't know what was happening to them at the premiere—a powerful choral finale in a symphony had never been seen before—Beethoven's music already swept the euphoric audience to their feet. Since then, the 9th Symphony, and especially its final movement, has become a true global hit. For example, the Council of Europe declared the instrumental prelude to the "Ode to Joy" the European anthem in 1972. Stefan Blunier, who returns to the podium of the Duisburg Philharmonic twice this season, conducts an exquisite quartet of soloists in a work that could hardly be more relevant even in our time.

Joy, beautiful spark of the gods

CityPalais

“Lie to me, I promise, I’ll believe”. Is a seducer always a cheat? Or is he himself being cheated on in return? Don Giovanni is the incarnation of the irresistible lover; a man who lightheartedly rushes from one conquest to another, who refuses to submit to any kind of moral claims on his person and who pays for his freedom with an incapability of forming an honest relationship with a woman or another person. Even his numerous mistresses are not really in love with Don Giovanni himself, but only make use of him as a mirrored image to project their own different needs.

Don Giovanni

With Gustav Mahler's monumental Eighth Symphony, Cornelius Meister and the State Orchestra continue their Mahler cycle and, together with eight vocal soloists, the children's choir and the State Opera Choir, bring the symphony concert series to a crowning conclusion. Shortly after completing the score, Mahler said in 1907: "The symphony must be like the world. It must encompass everything". This central credo for Mahler is reflected in the variety of forms and musical characters of his Eighth Symphony. Baroque fugue techniques can be found in it as well as a tonal language influenced by Richard Wagner. The first and only two performances during his lifetime were Mahler's greatest triumph. After the premiere in 1910, Thomas Mann commented that Mahler embodied "the most serious and sacred artistic will of our time".

7. Symphony Concert

Beethoven Hall (Beethovensaal)

Bach's St. John Passion is a unique work of shocking expressiveness. When the great Bach interpreter Philippe Herreweghe takes action with his choir and orchestra of the Collegium Vocale Gent and with excellent vocal soloists, Bach's music can be experienced in its entirety.

J.S. Bach: Johannes-Passion

Museum Ludwig

In the foyer of the opera house, Claudia Muschio, Itzeli Jáuregui, Charles Sy and Johannes Kammler present an entertaining and varied evening of songs from the Italian bel canto repertoire. The ensemble singers will be accompanied by Vlad Iftinca on the piano.

3. Song Recital

The Staatstheater Stuttgart

French music has always been considered to be particularly vocal. For the artistic director of the BR Choir, Peter Dijkstra, this is a good reason to present a fine selection of choral music by four Frenchmen. The focus is on Gabriel Fauré's musical requiem, which is one of the great requiem settings of the classical-romantic tradition.

Cum Jubilo

Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding

Max, the hunter’s apprentice, has to land a direct hit at the upcoming shooting match in order to marry his beloved Agathe. Out of his fear of potential failure, Max gets involved with "dark forces" in the wolf’s canyon: Six sure-fire bullets for his sole use whilst the seventh bullet is reserved for the devil to strike any victim he chooses. Carl Maria von Weber‘s Freischütz, which premiered in 1821, is the epitome of a German romantic opera. Never before have occult, transcendental and supernatural ideas been transformed into music so full of suggestive sounds.

Der Freischütz

A material that is as popular as it is ambivalent and evokes countless associations with one word: Casanova! Just one day after Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill had launched probably the theater sensation of the Weimar Republic with the Threepenny Opera in what would later become the Berliner Ensemble, director and choreographer Erik Charell followed suit right next door in the predecessor of the Friedrichstadtpalast. The capital’s press was enthusiastic: “Casanova is a great success. It means the resurrection of the operetta!” (Der Montag). The “electrifying music of Johann Strauss” (Berliner Tageblatt) was not only rearranged by Ralph Benatzky, but also electrified – by “the new instrument vibraphone”, as announced in the program booklet for the premiere.

Casanova

Johannes Kammler and Katharina Ruckgaber, among the finest of today’s roster of German singers, are joined by Imogen Cooper, universally admired for her profound musicality, formidable intellect and limpid tone. They travel through Hugo Wolf’s collection of 46 settings of poems by Paul Heyse, an unsurpassed Italian Songbook filled with reflections on love’s volatile nature.

Baritone

Johannes Kammler

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 18, 2026

Johannes Kammler baritone; Katharina Ruckgaber soprano; Imogen Cooper piano · Wigmore Hall

Past events

Sep 10, 2026

Dresden Festival Orchestra | Concerto Köln | Dresden Festival Choir of the Richard Wagner Academy | Kent Nagano | Soloists · Lucerne Festival

Apr 13 - May 22, 2026

La Cenerentola · Staatsoper Stuttgart

Future and recently performed repertoire

Don Giovanni in Don Giovanni by Mozart

Staatsoper Stuttgart

Ottokar in Der Freischütz by Weber

Staatsoper Stuttgart

Gunther in Götterdämmerung by Wagner

Lucerne Festival

Singer in Italienisches Liederbuch by Wolf

Wigmore Hall

Singer in Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven

Duisburger Philharmoniker

Singer in St. John Passion by Bach

Kölner Philharmonie

Dandini in Cinderella by Rossini

Staatsoper Stuttgart

Count Waldstein in Casanova by Strauss

Staatsoper Stuttgart

Singer in La Canzone dei Ricordi by Martucci

Staatsorchester Stuttgart

About

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