Rebecca Schmid

The bicentenary of his birth this year has prompted a closer look, with rarely performed operas staged across Europe over the past two seasons. Next month, the German city of Cologne — where Offenbach was born June 20, 1819 — will mount a new production of “La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein” (The Grand Duchess of Gérolstein), while Garsington Opera presents the British stage premiere of “Fantasio.”

In August, Barrie Kosky makes his directorial debut at the Salzburg Festival with “Orphée aux Enfers” (Orpheus in the Underworld). Meanwhile, Robert Carsen’s 2000 staging of “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” (The Tales of Hoffmann) remains in repertory at the Opéra Bastille, with a revival coming up in January and February of next year.

“Hoffmann,” which Offenbach left incomplete upon his death in 1880, represents a different side of the composer than his comic operas, which constitute the largest part of his oeuvre. The work was created in the aftermath of the 1870-71 French-Prussian War, when he had been forced into exile because of his German heritage. When Offenbach returned to Paris, his home since age 14, the fashion had tilted toward more sentimental plotlines.

The “opera fantastique” about three episodes in the love life of the drunken poet E.T.A. Hoffmann is sometimes understood as representing the suffering of the artist. Carsen’s production re-creates various locations within both the Opéra Bastille and Palais Garnier, from the orchestra pit that emerges as a backdrop for the mad Dr. Miracle at the end of the second act to the auditorium seats that move like waves of water during the third act’s barcarole “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour.”

“The work can be dramatic, ironic, sardonic,” Carsen said between rehearsals for Detlev Glanert’s “Oceane” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, which had its world premiere April 28. “It was important to try to do justice to all those theatrical qualities.”

The opera retains a touch of mystery, especially because there is no definitive version of the score. Musicologist Jean-Christophe Keck in 1993 discovered the finale of the fourth act, leading to a new edition created with Michael Kaye that provided the basis, albeit loosely, for new productions from the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain, to the Komische Oper Berlin. The Paris Opera, meanwhile, has stuck to a mix of older, more familiar editions so that singers can easily jump in if a soloist is indisposed, Carsen explained.

Offenbach was above all a man of the theater, conducting his own works and collaborating closely with his librettists (he also opened his own company, the Bouffes-Parisiens, in 1855). The Jewish-German composer paid homage to Parisian society while subverting bourgeois values, combining the ironic distance of an outsider with an intuitive feel for the culture’s pleasure-driven ways.

“La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein,” in which war is declared to brighten the spirits of a fictional grand duchy’s ruler, lampooned European politics but also won the admiration of Otto von Bismarck upon its 1867 premiere. As Laurence Senelick documents in his recent book “Jacques Offenbach and the Making of Modern Culture,” the future chancellor of the German Empire saw in the opera an affirmation of the need to annex Germany’s minor states under the aegis of Prussia.

“Here is a very good example of Offenbach not being on anybody’s side,” Senelick said by phone from Medford, Massachusetts, “but rather casting a rather jaded eye at the way that politicians and diplomats attempt to organize everybody’s life.”

The comic opera at the same time makes a kind of feminist statement. The duchess rules over the land with the sword of her father (which Senelick considers a phallic symbol) and promotes the soldier, Fritz, to general in the interest of seducing him.

Senelick said Offenbach’s main heroines, from the duchess to the title character of “La Périchole,” based on the story of a real-life courtesan, “are all women who talk about their libidos and find ways of satisfying them.”

Conductor François-Xavier Roth, who presides over the new production next month as general music director of the city of Cologne, also sees contemporary relevance in “La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein.” “The main character is a woman who plays with men,” he said by phone from London. “It is not the men who play with her. Offenbach reveals himself to be a great progressive and visionary.”

Roth noted the timeless qualities of both Offenbach’s theatrical topics and the scores themselves. “One has the impression that the music was written yesterday,” he said. “It is immediately stirring. This is a composer who understood all the subtleties of life in society at the time, notably in Paris.”

The production at Opera Cologne will present sung numbers in the original French while translating spoken dialogue into German so that people have a chance to follow the story, Roth said, adding that the solution “pays homage to both of Offenbach’s countries.” He also noted that capturing the work’s humor required “perhaps more technicality and precision than for a drama.”

Offenbach was banned by the Nazis as a Jewish-born composer and disappeared from repertoire in the 1930s. But he quickly made a comeback in postwar Germany — led by the Komische Oper, in what was then East Berlin — and his work continues to be performed regularly throughout the country.

His comic operas, meanwhile, do not have a strong tradition of translation for the English-speaking world. “It is the same reason why Gilbert and Sullivan are not done much outside of English,” Senelick said. “You need a libretto that works. Too many of the translations go overboard with vaudeville jokes and coarse wit rather than capture the ‘esprit’ of the original.”

If Offenbach is being reinstated by scholarship as not only a composer of light theater but also one of the most important figures in 19th-century music, his legacy will be done justice only if theaters around the world continue to program lesser-known works. They include the romantic opera “Les Fées du Rhin” (The Rhine Nixies, recorded in 2003 by the Orchestre National de Montpellier in France) or the political satire “Le Roi Carotte” (King Carrot, presented in Lyon, France, four seasons ago). “That is after all where opera lives,” Senelick said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/arts/opera-jacques-offenbach.html" id="a46a856b-4b4b-3235-ac42-87d8d8af9458">The New York Times</a>.

BERLIN — Composer Jacques Offenbach captured the streets of mid-19th-century Paris like no other. But while he produced about 130 scores for the stage, his profile is often reduced to a spirited cancan or a dreamy barcarole.

For His 200th Birthday, a Composer Gets a Closer Look

Royal Opera House

Gounod’s “Faust”

April 30

David McVicar’s 2004 staging returns to Covent Garden with the tenor Michael Fabiano as the title character and the bass-baritone Erwin Schrott as the taunting Méphistophélès, to whom Faust sells his soul. The production sets the action in 1870s Paris, drawing parallels between the plight of Faust and the conflicted loyalty of the composer, Charles Gounod, to the theater and the Roman Catholic Church. Dan Ettinger conducts a cast that further includes soprano Irina Lungu as Marguerite and baritone Stéphane Degout — who portrayed the king in George Benjamin’s 2018 opera “Lessons in Love and Violence” — as her brother, Valentin.

Metropolitan Opera

Poulenc’s “Dialogues des Carmélites”

May 11

Newly installed music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads a revival of the 1977 John Dexter production that The New York Times has called “austerely powerful.” Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard returns to the role of Blanche de la Force, who takes refuge at a convent during the French Revolution, only to join her sisters in death at the guillotine. Soprano Erin Morley also reprises the role of the young nun Constance, while international soloist Karita Mattila — known to the Met’s audiences as Tosca, Manon Lescaut and other title characters — is the prioress, Madame de Croissy.

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”

June 15

This production, which opened last season, offers a glimpse into the partnership of the music director Daniel Barenboim with Dmitri Tcherniakov, who staged “Parsifal” there and is to take on Barenboim’s last “Ring” cycle in 2020 (coinciding with the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s plans for the tetralogy, staged by Stefan Herheim). Tcherniakov offers a starkly realist portrayal of contemporary high society, while Barenboim draws upon more than three decades of experience, having made his Bayreuth Festival debut with “Tristan” in 1981. Andreas Schlager and Anja Kampe return to the title roles of the star-crossed lovers, while René Pape now appears as King Marke and Violeta Urmana as Isolde’s maid, Brangäne (an earlier recording of the production is also available on the private television network mezzo.fr).

Paris Opera

Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”

June 21

A new staging in coproduction with the Met joins the music director Philippe Jordan with Ivo van Hove, who has emerged as a major director on Broadway. The cast showcases a range of up-and-coming talent. Young baritone Étienne Dupuis appears as the ruthless Don Giovanni, while soprano Jacquelyn Wagner sings Donna Anna and soprano Nicole Car the hopelessly smitten Donna Elvira. The tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac is the noble Don Ottavio and the young bass-baritone Philippe Sly is Don Giovanni’s comic sidekick, Leporello.

Bavarian State Opera

Strauss’ “Salome”

July 6

Music director Kirill Petrenko conducts his second new production of the season with Strauss’ bloody tale of seduction and revenge. German soprano Marlis Petersen, known by audiences from Munich to New York as the title character of Berg’s “Lulu,” makes her debut as the femme fatale Salome. Dramatic baritone Wolfgang Koch plays her victim, Jochanaan (John the Baptist), while tenor Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke appears as her overbearing stepfather, Herodes. Stage director Krzysztof Warlikowski, who also serves as artistic director of Warsaw’s New Theater, takes on the one-act opera.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/arts/upcoming-opera-streaming-broadcast.html" id="48db4517-36a2-331e-abbe-421de25e4d47">The New York Times</a>.

From a new take on Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” at the Palais Garnier in Paris to French opera in a classic production from New York, here is a selection of coming live cinema broadcasts. Also on the horizon are free streams of Wagner and Strauss in Germany.

Coming Attractions for Opera Fans, at the Movies and Online

The current troupe includes not just 10 singers from eight countries but also four budding conductors and a stage director. As part of the Royal Opera House’s mission to promote diversity, the program last season branched out to coach three singers from “socially underprivileged” backgrounds through the initiative “Link Artists” and offer workshops for female conductors. The next installment, dedicated to ballet music, takes place May 18-19.

But the main objective of the program, founded in 2001, is to place young artists in the workings of a leading musical institution, providing them with the tools to hone their craft over a two-year period in which they work as salaried employees but also have coaches for language, movement and more at their disposal. At the end of each season, having played small roles and learned others as understudies, the singers appear in their own show of scenes and excerpts on the main stage (this year’s summer performance, on July 15, includes Mozart, Verdi and more).

“Every facility of the company is made available” to the young artists, said the Royal Opera’s music director, Antonio Pappano, through a spokeswoman, “so that their talents are nurtured at a crucial time in their development, before they are out in the world facing the music business alone.”

Henze’s “Phaedra,” which will be performed at the newly refurbished Linbury Theatre in London, was selected to include American countertenor Patrick Terry — a voice type the program has on its roster for the first time — but also to push the whole ensemble in new directions. The “concert opera” for five singers and 23-member orchestra, which had its premiere at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden in 2007, demands performances of both technical extremes and philosophical depth.

“More and more is expected of young artists today,” said the program’s artistic director, David Gowland, in a phone interview, citing the growing importance of contemporary music. “You have to do everything to survive and have a career.”

He hopes to help singers stand out in today’s highly competitive market. With “Phaedra,” the Chinese mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu takes on her first German stage role and first contemporary opera. In preparation for the title character, the 23-year-old received four months of language coaching.

“Singing it in German with full attention to text can be tiring for a nonnative speaker,” she said. She added that the character is more complicated dramatically than other parts she has tackled: “It is not easy given my age and life experience, but I’m really looking forward.”

Henze’s last stage work is as much a story of unrequited love and vengeance as it is of life and death. The composer interrupted work midway in 2005 after falling almost fatally ill, only to write a second act that unexpectedly introduces a tango and other playful elements to the brooding score.

Drawing largely upon Jean Racine’s 17th-century adaptation of the Greek myth, the poetic libretto by Christian Lehnert tells of Phaedra’s attempt to seduce her stepson, Hippolyt, and her subsequent suicide. She leaves behind a note accusing Hippolyt of rape, prompting King Theseus to have him dragged along the rocks. But with the goddess Artemis on his side, he is transformed into king of the forest.

Israeli director Noa Naamat, 28, will reinforce the presence of the Minotaur, who has in fact already been killed by Theseus when the story begins and sings only in the final scene. The mythical figure represents for Naamat “a wild, destructive creature that lives in the minds of the other characters and prevents them from finding their way out” of the labyrinth in which the opera opens, she said, also in a phone interview.

The Minotaur will emerge as a force of evil, for example handing Phaedra the knife when she tries to slit her wrists in the first act (she will ultimately be found hanging from a rope). By the second act, as the text and music become more direct, Naamat said that “the characters become more animal-like in their behavior.”

In addition to consulting with contemporary music experts on the Royal Opera’s staff, she contacted Lehnert, whose insight only strengthened her conviction about the significance of the Minotaur. In keeping with her vision, sets by the Greek performance designer Takis will create a “cold, industrial, abandoned aesthetic,” she said.

For Naamat, the Jette Parker Program offers a rare opportunity to showcase her abilities. She recalled the excitement of seeing her ideas come to life on the main stage during last year’s summer performance. Just as crucial is the opportunity to work alongside leading talent as a member of the directorial staff.

“There is nothing like being in a rehearsal room with Maestro Pappano,” she said, citing not just his knowledge but his “love and passion” for the art form.

Singers who have coached the young artists include the baritone Alessandro Corbelli, who appears in a new production of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” through April 22; the bass-baritone Gerald Finley; and the soprano Renée Fleming.

“If you want to have the experience of working with your idol,” said Wu, “it might be possible.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/arts/young-artists-train-royal-opera-london.html" id="1c53f0d8-53af-340b-a7c8-217d00673255">The New York Times</a>.

When Hans Werner Henze’s “Phaedra” takes the stage at the Royal Opera House next month, the entire cast will consist of performers at the start of their careers. The production is a fitting platform for the Jette Parker Young Artists Program, which nurtures but also challenges talent from around the world.

A Chance for Young Artists to Shine on the Opera Stage

But even for an orchestra that lives and breathes tradition, recruiting the next generation of talent is no longer self-evident. That is why, for the first time in its history, the Philharmonic is opening an academy to train musicians hands-on. Auditions begin early next year amid a busy schedule that includes touring to Lugano, Switzerland; Salzburg, Austria; Frankfurt, Germany; Budapest; and, in early March, New York.

Orchestra academies offer young players a transition from conservatory to professional life but also allow institutions to pass on their specific culture of playing. The Berlin Philharmonic has maintained its own academy since 1972, at the initiative of Herbert von Karajan, and graduates currently occupy about 30 percent of the orchestra’s seats. More recently, in 2014, the Shanghai Symphony began partnering with the New York Philharmonic to prepare instrumentalists in China for the demands of orchestral life.

The Vienna Philharmonic’s academy will be comparatively small and exclusive. Only 12 players, ages up to 26, will gain admission to a fully subsidized two-year program not only immersing them in the traditional curriculum of chamber music, private lessons and performances with full orchestra, but also exposing them to Austrian culture and history. At least one instrumentalist will be from the United States, thanks to support from the Vienna Philharmonic Society, and talks are underway with leading East Coast conservatories.

Double-bassist Michael Bladerer, who also serves as managing director of the self-governed orchestra, admitted that the Philharmonic had been disappointed in recent years with the quality of auditions for new players. He hopes that the academy will raise standards.

“Very often people are good technically, but we don’t always find what we are looking for,” he said. There is a desire, he said, to hear what he called “character,” adding, “In opera, it is about life and death.”

The Philharmonic divides its time between the pit of the Vienna State Opera and a schedule of up to 130 concerts annually. Players must rapidly learn new repertoire and, in the absence of a general music director, adapt to the style of different conductors. Even in pure orchestral music, the Philharmonic — and in particular the string section — is known for its singing quality.

Welser-Möst likened the orchestra’s musical language to a dialect that must be preserved in an age of internationalization. He called the academy an important initiative for ensuring that the Vienna Philharmonic would not become interchangeable with other orchestras, citing as examples the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, which are also famous for their rich strings.

“It is about having everyone speak the same language,” he said.

Seasoned conductors such as Welser-Möst, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta and Herbert Blomstedt are already lined up to coach and lecture academy members when they are conducting the Philharmonic in Vienna. Plans are also underway for the academy to perform its own chamber series at the Musikverein and at the Stift Melk, an opulent baroque abbey in Lower Austria where players will enjoy a tour of the monastery library, crypt and more.

“One has to have seen, felt and smelled it to understand how old this culture is,” Bladerer said. “You can’t just read about it or look at a picture.”

Academy members will also be encouraged to study scores and letters in the archives of the Philharmonic and the Musikverein in connection with a given piece of music. The Philharmonic’s chairman and first violinist, Daniel Froschauer, recalled the impression of studying the original score of Schubert’s Fourth Symphony during rehearsals.

“One never forgets it again,” he said. “Now that I’ve seen how the crescendi look, I play it differently.”

The Philharmonic has distinguished itself over the centuries for its specifically Viennese, as opposed to German, sound culture. While it is possible to isolate certain features such as judicious use of vibrato or the sonority of native instruments such as Vienna horn or Vienna oboe, critics often resort to metaphors.

Eduard Hanslick wrote of the “feminine” as opposed to “masculine” approach, the sensual rather than the rigorous, in 1860. As Christian Merlin explains in his recent book “Le Philharmonique de Vienne. Biographie d’un Orchestre” (The Vienna Philharmonic. Biography of an Orchestra), the Viennese style results from the fusion of “Jewish, German, Czech, Hungarian, Slavic, Balkan components, forming a truly multinational melting pot.”

Until the 1970s, the sound culture was easily transmitted as most members studied with a Philharmonic player at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna before joining the orchestra. But in recent years, recruitment has become less and less local. The presence of family dynasties has also waned, with percussionists Benjamin Schmidinger, solo clarinetist Daniel Ottensamer and a handful of other players serving as exceptions.

The orchestra also experienced a large turnover in age and nationality over the past two decades. More than 50 of the orchestra’s 148 players retired from 2000 to 2012, and the Philharmonic’s average age is currently 40. About 30 percent of players are foreign-born, as opposed to 18 percent in 1974.

The majority of foreign players come from Central and Eastern Europe, reaching back to the Philharmonic’s roots in the fabric of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but also extending to Russia (violinist Ekaterina Frolova is one of 16 women).

As Merlin notes, the engagement of overseas players has been “more episodic.” At present, only Australia and New Zealand are represented, through three players.

The academy will be an opportunity to widen networks for recruiting and to embed young players in the Philharmonic’s working conditions. Accompanying duties at the State Opera will be limited, however, to ensure students have enough time to practice and win an audition either into the Philharmonic (a process that requires playing in the opera pit for three years before becoming an official member) or another great orchestra.

Welser-Möst spoke of the need “to infect these young people with the virus”: “It is a calling for most people to be a part of the Philharmonic,” he said, noting the personal dedication with which Bladerer and Froschauer are opening the academy.

“The way we play must be experienced,” Froschauer said. “There is a collective memory that we pass on without knowing it. This is an opportunity for young people from around the world to come and take part.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/arts/music/vienna-philharmonic-academy-announced.html" id="da947251-6d59-3343-aef2-4c2f1766f5cb">The New York Times</a>.

The Vienna Philharmonic Looks to a New Generation

VIENNA — There was no mistaking the Vienna Philharmonic’s plush sound in November at the Musikverein here, as Franz Welser-Möst conducted excerpts from Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung.” Gentle strings, glowing brass and a blend across all instrumental sections spoke to a culture of playing that has been cultivated since the 19th century.

This year, his estate returned from the United States not only to the city of his birth but also to the building where he was a star student. The exil.arte center, founded in 2006 as a society and operating with its own fireproof vaults, recital facilities, lecture space and more at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts since 2016, is archiving the manuscripts of neglected composers and performers, and also, perhaps most importantly, making sure the music is heard.

In contrast with the return of Nazi-looted artwork to their original owners, which has been required by law in Austria since 1998, exil.arte hopes to revive the legacy of musical figures who remained connected to Austrian culture until their death. The center produces recordings in collaboration with the label Gramola Vienna and holds a concert series at Vienna’s ORF Radio Café. More recently, it was entrusted a new critical edition of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s music, in collaboration with publisher Schott, that will include his film scores for the first time.

Through July, exil.arte is home to the exhibit “Wenn ich komponiere, bin ich wieder in Wien” (I return to Vienna when I compose), marking a century after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire and eight decades after Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany. Korngold’s tailcoat and pen are on display amid the photos and biographies of 50 musical figures, including violinist Alma Rosé, who escaped to London with her father, Arnold Rosé, a concert master with the Vienna Philharmonic, but died in Auschwitz (she was deported after traveling to The Hague in 1940, when Dutch forces surrendered to the Nazis); and conductor Theo Buchwald, who founded the Peruvian National Symphony Orchestra.

Vienna’s leading musical institutions were slow to fully delve into how Nazi occupation had damaged Austrian cultural life. Former Nazi Party members were well represented in the Philharmonic into the 1960s, with trumpet player Helmut Wobisch acting as executive director despite having served in the SS. Such uncomfortable facts were first exposed in the early 1990s, and the past decade has seen a surge in scholarly activities.

In 2011, historical biography “The Political Orchestra: The Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics During the Third Reich,” by Fritz Trümpi, a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts, revealed the extent to which both orchestras were used by the regime. That same year, the Vienna Philharmonic began gathering and publishing research about victimized players (nine, including Arnold Rosé, made it into exile; seven more did not survive).

In terms of programming, Trümpi has documented that Wagner and Bruckner essentially replaced Mendelssohn and Mahler in 1938. It was not until the 1960s, thanks to Leonard Bernstein, that Mahler regained a substantial footing in the orchestra’s repertoire.

But exil.arte is covering a chapter in musical history that is still largely neglected. Bricht, Wilhelm Grosz, Hans Gál and other composers among the 14 estates represent what Michael Haas, the center’s senior researcher, called a “strain of uniquely Viennese modernism” that was not “plowing down the Schönbergian road of atonality.”

Their tonal but eclectic idiom fell between the cracks as the 20th century became increasingly split between the avant-garde and the commercial music industry. Exile also had detrimental effects on these composers’ output.

Bricht produced only scattered works and eventually stopped altogether, spending his last years as a voice teacher at the Indiana University School of Music. (He died in 1970 at 65.) His first and only symphony, recently recorded by the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, combines free counterpoint, inebriating harmonies and colorful instrumentation into what Haas called the “promise of greatness.”

Other estates provide insight into the importance of folk and popular music, a “vast area” that Haas said was “wiped out.” Slavic folklore pervades the works of Jan Urban, a Czech-born composer who immigrated to Serbia and fought against Austria during World War I. Robert Freistadtl (born Frey) was a successful composer of operettas, collaborating with leading director Max Reinhardt, only to write in a state of homesickness from England.

Sitting in an office once occupied by Austrian composer Franz Schmidt, Bricht's teacher, exil.arte founder Gerold Gruber said he was relieved that a once-taboo topic had garnered public interest. “There is a giant crater that at a certain point has to be filled with life,” he said.

This year, the Vienna Philharmonic received the estate of a former concertmaster, Franz Mairecker, who maintained correspondence with players such as cellist Friedrich Siegfried Buxbaum, a member of the Rosé Quartet in British exile, as well as Holocaust victims.

The centenary of Bernstein’s birth also provided an opportunity for the orchestra’s archivist, Silvia Kargl, to re-examine his history with the orchestra. Her article “A Transatlantic Musical Affair — Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic” documents how he only slowly warmed up to the relationship.

Bernstein ultimately left a lasting imprint, introducing works by Shostakovich and Sibelius, but also cultivating a specifically Viennese repertoire, whether with Mozart or Mahler.

If it remains a tragedy that composers such as Bricht or Grosz were ousted from this tradition, Haas expressed hopes that they would gain recognition as part of the city’s 20th-century fabric. “Never in a million years,” he said, “did they think their music would be performed just as a memory to the Holocaust.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/arts/music/vienna-nazis-composers-exilearte.html" id="29ff2199-f82f-3ebd-a141-6eabf95f9281">The New York Times</a>.

VIENNA — When Walter Bricht was forced to emigrate from Austria in 1938, he was one of the capital’s most promising musical figures. Performances of his first symphony were scheduled with the Vienna Philharmonic, which performed the premiere of his First Piano Concerto, as well as the Berlin Philharmonic and Staatskapelle Dresden. Those plans never came to fruition once it was revealed that he had three Jewish-born grandparents.

Restoring Musical Legacies in Vienna

The opening, three centuries after the apartments’ inauguration to celebrate the marriage of the Electoral Prince Friedrich August and the Archduchess Maria Josepha, follows a $38 million reconstruction involving handmade tapestries and ceiling paintings.

Also soon to open is the Semper Gallery, after a $57 million renovation. The 19th-century building adjacent to the palace, which was also damaged in World War II, will be home to a permanent exhibition juxtaposing its old masters collection with a variety of sculpture.

As a preview of the new additions to Dresden’s museum landscape, a selection of 23 paintings, swords, porcelain vases and more will be on display at TEFAF, the fine art fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands, this month. The exhibit is a tribute to both imperial might and the craftsmanship of a bygone age.

Marion Ackermann, general director of Dresden’s State Art Collections, called the apartments a “tremendous human achievement” in which handwork was brought “to the highest point of precision.” She considers the reconstruction “a European project in that we had to gather expertise from all over the Continent,” she said, much as Dresden’s 18th-century court attracted people from around the world.

August the Strong reigned not only over Saxony but also, from 1697 until his death in 1733, Poland and Lithuania, creating an axis with Russia. The style of his court, however, was modeled after Versailles.

The red silk wall tapestries for the state apartments’ opulent audience chamber were re-created in Lyon, France, where they were originally purchased, while green silk velvet for the state bedroom was produced in Genoa, Italy. A piece of canopy from the state bed, which was found in storage, provided fabric samples.

“It’s a kind of detective work,” said Dirk Syndram, director of the State Art Collections’ Armory Chamber and Green Vault, museums in the Residential Palace. The newly married royal couple never actually slept in the apartments, however, which Syndram explained was rather “a dynastical representation of power” (Friedrich August became August III in 1734, maintaining his father’s titles in Eastern Europe).

The Maastricht exhibit includes the original golden justaucorps, a French-style knee-length coat worn by August the Strong to the 1719 wedding festivities. It is one of eight outfits that, alongside royal weaponry, represent “the political height” of his reign, according to textile conservator Stefanie Penthin, and will have its home in the state bedroom.

Also on display are swords, scabbards and a walking cane made in Japan at the turn of the 18th century, all gifts to August from Peter the Great. Syndram explained that the objects were a rarity at the time in Europe, given the lack of access to Japan.

Most of the apartments’ furniture was preserved in castles outside Dresden during World War II and will now return in restored form. Ceiling paintings by Louis de Silvestre measuring more than 750 square feet were re-created based on color slides that were archived starting in 1943, once the Nazis anticipated Allied bombing.

“It’s a historical absurdity,” Ackermann said. “Hitler sent out historians and photographers to Germany and occupied regions to document wall and ceiling paintings once he recognized that the war would come to an end badly.”

Despite deep scars, the rebuilt city of Dresden has bounced back as an international tourist destination. Of the 2.2 million visitors to the state art collections last year, almost half were from outside the country.

The Semper Gallery, which is to open in December, has been refurbished to allow for the maintenance of proper air temperature and wireless internet that supports multimedia guides. The building has also been overhauled to improve lighting design.

“There are instances where a sculpture is formed perfectly in the space with its shadow,” Ackermann said.

She added that the gallery would provide the space and conditions “to present the old masters in a necessary degree of intensity,” noting the potential for special exhibits around main attractions such as the untouched paintings of Bellotto and Cranach. “We can now create exciting connections between works,” she said. “In principle, we will be testing this out in Maastricht.”

Featured at TEFAF from the collection will be Rembrandt’s “The Abduction of Ganymede,” which fittingly travels to the Netherlands upon the 350th anniversary of the painter’s death. Among the four sculptures included is a Roman antique, “Torso of a Dancing Satyr,” that dates from the early first century AD.

“We arrived at a selection that shows the full spectrum of the gallery,” Syndram said.

But only when the sites reopen in Dresden will the objects’ historic context fully emerge. It was August III who in 1754 purchased perhaps the old masters collection’s most famous painting, Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna,” continuing the legacy of his father, who laid the cornerstones of Dresden’s state museums with the Green Vault, Print Gallery, porcelain collection and more.

“We are, so to speak, pressing the reset button,” Syndram said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/archives/restoring-a-corner-of-dresdens-royal-past.html" id="b240d25c-f5de-3189-adbb-44869c61268c">The New York Times</a>.

Restoring a Corner of Dresden's Royal Past

BERLIN — From a silver fireplace screen to a jacket spun with golden thread, artifacts from the state apartments of Dresden’s Royal Palace represent the dynasty of August the Strong in full splendor. The property was destroyed during the Allied bombing of February 1945 that reduced much of the Saxon city’s center to rubble, but will rematerialize this September in the palace’s west wing.

<h1>Alexander Pereira has gone through his share of trials as artistic director of La Scala. He was nearly blocked from starting his job in 2014 when the Italian authorities questioned the legality of purchasing four productions from the Salzburg Festival. More recently, in March, he inflamed the theater’s advisory board and local politicians by courting the Saudi culture minister as a sponsor.</h1>

The minister, Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, had pledged a total of 15 million euros (about $17 million) with the promise of becoming a board member. La Scala’s administration rejected the deal and is to decide late this month whether to renew Pereira’s contract, which expires in the spring of 2020.

The house will continue with plans to collaborate with the government of Saudi Arabia on converting an all-girls’ school in Riyadh, the capital, into a coed music conservatory that will include ballet, instrumental teaching and a choir. The facilities, for 600 children, are scheduled to open in November.

At home in Milan, Pereira has increased private sponsorship for La Scala by 8 million euros since 2014 — relieving the house of a 6 million-euro deficit when he arrived. The company receives a third of its approximately 123 million-euro budget from public funding (compared with more than half at the state operas of Vienna and Munich).

Pereira, a 71-year-old Austrian, is known as a savvy fundraiser. As director of the Zurich Opera House from 1991 to 2012 and during a short tenure at the Salzburg Festival from 2011 to 2014, he placed an emphasis on new productions.

In Milan, he has increased opera performances and has concentrated growth in the autumn months: In 2012, the house used to run three productions from September to November; now there are five. With its doors open to the public on more evenings now, the house has seen a rise in the number of visitors — from 360,000 in 2012 to about 420,000 — but also a slight drop in the attendance rate, to 88%.

Together with his music director, Riccardo Chailly, Pereira has both cultivated the house’s illustrious Italian tradition and pushed programming in new directions.

He scored a victory at this year’s International Opera Awards in London when Gyorgy Kurtag’s “Fin de Partie” (Endgame) — originally commissioned for the Salzburg Festival and premiered in Milan in November — was named world premiere of the year.

The upcoming season features 11 new opera productions, including a double bill of the 20th-century composer Luigi Nono’s azione scenica in two parts, “Intolleranza 1960”— which will be performed at La Scala for the first time — and Schönberg’s monodrama “Erwartung” (Expectation). Continuing a Puccini cycle that draws upon the most recent scholarship, Chailly opens the season in December with “Tosca” in a staging by Davide Livermore. The conductor also presides over his first Strauss opera at the theater with “Salome.”

Pereira spoke by phone just after Korngold’s “Die Tote Stadt” (The Dead City) received its first performance in history at La Scala. “It was one of the biggest triumphs that we’ve had,” he said. “So I’m relatively motivated.”

The following conversation has been translated from German, edited and condensed.

Q: How have you struck a balance between the theater’s native tradition and introducing new repertoire?

A: If you are heading Milan’s famous La Scala, then you have a responsibility to consider what is part of its tradition. The theater was opened in 1778 — at a time when there was no opera house in Vienna or Berlin. But the danger is to derive everything from this tradition.

We try to stretch La Scala as wide as possible because one tends to situate Italian repertoire only between Verdi and Puccini. To present worthy operas that were written before and after is important.

Q: It must be a difficult time for opera for Italy, given shrinking public funds.

A: That is the big challenge of running this house. I have to spend my time collecting money.

If I only look in Italy, I reach a limit. And the question arises: Who else might want to finance an institution of worldwide importance?

Politically, one could wonder whether the European Union would be interested in La Scala. But that is much too long term. If I want to solve a problem in the short or midterm, then I have to find private money.

Who is investing in Europe at the moment? The Saudis, the Chinese, the Russians.

Q: You weren’t concerned about the cultural differences if a Saudi native had joined the board?

A: In the big European banks, if there is one [foreign] board member, the board does not break into shambles. If seven of 10 members were, then it would probably play a role.

But the important thing is that, in a country that has been without music education for 50 years, a conservatory is being founded. And the people who want to make this conservatory possible are surely not the worst in the world.

Q: Must Europe prepare itself for a future in which cultural institutions are more dependent on private sponsorship?

A: I don’t think that public funds will increase. The money has to come from somewhere. That’s why one has to build a strong private-public partnership.

And galvanize the audience to buy as many tickets as possible. La Scala finances itself through almost 70% of its own earnings.

One has to believe in the power of renewal. Theaters put on fewer productions because they think they have to save money. One closes down ballet ensembles. Total nonsense! On every evening that a ballet is not performed, I have an empty theater.

Q: Are there any bitter feelings that next season could be your last at La Scala?

A: We’ll see what happens. I have planned [the program] until 2022, which is in my contract.

I am a person who always looks forward and not back. Of course there were disappointments. But all in all, I am very grateful for this time in Milan because I have the feeling that I could do a lot for the house, not just nationally but internationally.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/arts/la-scala-alexander-pereira.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

La Scala's director thinks, and works, globally

The house will continue with plans to collaborate with the government of Saudi Arabia on converting an all-girls’ school in Riyadh, the capital, into a coed music conservatory that will include ballet, instrumental teaching and a choir. The facilities, for 600 children, are scheduled to open in November.

The Met broadcasts to cinemas in 70 countries. The Royal Opera House in London relays to cinemas in 51 countries, while the Paris Opera is present in movie theaters in 18 countries. The Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin recently transmitted a production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” to French cinemas and plans a live broadcast of one production next season (in 2018, the house also began streaming on its own website and in collaboration with broadcasting partners).

Institutions from the Glyndebourne Festival to the Salzburg Festival have partnerships with the online platform medici.tv, which in 2018 celebrated its 10th anniversary and has about 280,000 registered users. Stingray Classica officially starts within the network of Amazon Prime Video in June, featuring such organizations as the Teatro Real in Madrid and the Royal Opera House, while Opera Vision offers free streams from more than 20 houses across Europe.

The flood of offerings is a result of reduced coverage on public television, an unstable recording industry and the low cost of producing for the web. While a cinema broadcast involves video methods that are more sophisticated than even those of television, a typical stream can be executed with about a third of production costs.

“Streaming is really about access and visibility,” said Peter Maniura, project director, classical archive and orchestras digital strategy, at BBC Music. “The vast majority of organizations” have not tried to monetize their product, he said, “for the simple reason that there are very few with sufficient scale and impact to actually be able to make money.”

He distinguished between a “tradition which the Met started for high-quality cinema experience” and the “public service space” — which was traditionally in television and has now in part migrated to the internet — where viewers expect to have free content. “The major players have been in a position for a number of years,” said Maniura, citing as examples the Met, the Royal Opera or La Scala in Milan. “It’s hard for a midscale house to match that.”

La Scala in October produced Mozart’s “La Finta Giardiniera” in 8K (the highest ultra high definition resolution) together with Japanese broadcaster NHK. The house’s long-standing partnership with Italy’s RAI television and radio has branched out into three annual productions for cinema and limited-time streaming.

With the Met’s “Live in HD” series, General Manager Peter Gelb built upon the audience for Saturday matinee radio broadcasts that began in the 1930s and continue to draw an international following. One cinema transmission attracts an average total audience of 240,000 to 250,000 people, while ticket sales average 2.5 million annually, Gelb said.

“This is the one commercially successful part of our overall operation,” Gelb said. The series brings in a net revenue of $17 million to $18 million, which he said was “not a cure-all but helps in addition to box office revenue and fundraising.”

All 10 productions per season are also broadcast nationally on PBS, but the live format is reserved for cinema. The web-based service Met Opera on Demand, which has more than 15,000 subscribers, makes content available after three to six months and includes radio broadcasts.

When in-house attendance began declining in 2013, there were concerns that the low cost and comfort of watching new productions at a local movie theater were infringing on ticket sales. But Gelb said that a survey three years ago exploring the correlation between cinema attendance and in-house attendance found “that the HD transmissions had no negative effect on box office attendance.”

“If anything,” he said, “the transmissions help gain some traction for opera.”

He admitted, however, that affordable rush tickets and student ticketing programs had been more successful drivers of new audience members. He also emphasized the use of electronic content for educational purposes: More than 140 U.S. universities and international institutions, including the Sorbonne in Paris, subscribe to the service Met Opera on Demand: Student Access, while a program for children in more than 30 U.S. school districts combines classroom education with visits to the HD broadcasts.

The Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s general director, Matthias Schulz, also sees the distribution of digital content as crucial to ensuring opera’s relevance in society at large and acknowledged Gelb’s pioneering role. But he will not broadcast live to movie theaters in the Berlin area so that local residents will attend in person. “One should rather make sure that opera becomes truly widespread,” he said, adding that it is “totally wrong” to expect that they will make a lot of money from broadcasts in the coming years.

The house reported 25,000 views for its stream of Rameau’s “Hippolyte et Aricie” this season, which was available for 30 days on Arte Concert, a web-based platform of the French television network Arte (a television documentary follows next month, featuring interviews with conductor Simon Rattle, set designers and more). The Bavarian State Opera, now in its seventh season of free livestreaming on its own site, cited as its record viewership 170,000 people from 50 countries for Wagner’s “Parsifal” in a live transmission and 24-hour video-on-demand in 2018.

Maniura emphasized the importance of going beyond full performance relays to build “a richer landscape of connection with audiences.” In 2017, BBC Arts Digital joined forces with BBC Radio 3, nine British opera houses and other organizations for #OperaPassionDay, which included livestreaming but also a pop-up performance, museum exhibit and social media campaign.

“There is an enormous world of contextualization,” he said. “This is the place where digital technology can change the degree of engagement.”

The content generated from cinema broadcasts only facilitates a company’s presence on social media and other online platforms. But Gelb is wary of diluting the Met’s brand by joining aggregate streaming sites.

He stands by cinema as fertile ground for providing the audience with new perspectives on the art form, whether through interviews, glimpses into the costume shop or extracts of documentaries.

“We, the producers, are in total control,” he said.

Opera houses find more ways to meet fans where they are

BERLIN — Since the Metropolitan Opera began broadcasting live to movie theaters, in 2006, companies from the Bolshoi to the Komische Oper Berlin have seen digital distribution as crucial to positioning themselves internationally. Only a handful of players have the standing and resources to create for cinema, and many organizations in Europe turn to free web streaming, but never before have opera houses had such freedom to produce their own content.