Known for Acting
Three hundred years old and as timely as ever, Handel's monumental Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt) arrives at the 2025 Salzburg Festival in a new staging by the audacious, award-winning Dmitri Tcherniakov! When Caesar (Christophe Dumaux) comes to Egypt on the hunt for his enemy Pompey, he discovers that the pharaoh Ptolemy (Yuriy Mynenko) has beaten him to the punch, setting Pompey's son Sextus (Federico Fiorio) on a mission for vengeance — all while Ptolemy's sister Cleopatra (Olga Kulchynska) schemes to take the throne for herself, leading her directly into the path of Caesar… This tale of uncompromising rivalries and the corrupting thrall of political power is animated by one of Handel's finest scores, majestic in the hands of expert Baroque ensemble Le Concert d'Astrée under their celebrated founder Emmanuelle Haïm.
Mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina headlines a winning ensemble as the feisty heroine, Rosina, alongside high-flying tenor Jack Swanson, in his Met debut, as her secret beloved, Count Almaviva. Baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky stars as Figaro, the titular barber of Seville, with bass-baritone Peter Kálmán as Dr. Bartolo and bass Alexander Vinogradov as Don Basilio rounding out the principal cast.
Sergei S. Prokofiev's monumental setting of Leo N. Tolstoy's epic novel, War and Peace. The composer and his wife Mira compressed the plot, set during Napoleon's Russian campaign, into a powerful sequence of scenes in which the love story between Natasha Rostova and Andrei Bolkonsky and the description of the Russian army's fight against the French invasion alternate in rich contrast, and at the same time are closely interwoven. All is related by the music in its fullness of splendid themes and touchingly quiet moments. Prokofiev's musical-dramatic masterpiece combines social drama and historical chronicle in its 13 scenes to form an exuberant panorama. In this production by Dmitri Tcherniakov, the opera is performed in in Munich for the first time ever.
Paris, 1900. Penniless writer Rodolfo believes that art is all he needs – until he meets Mimì, the lonely seamstress who lives upstairs. So begins a timeless love story that blooms, fades, and rekindles with the passing seasons. But while the couple’s friends, Marcello and Musetta passionately row and make up, a force greater than love threatens to overtake Rodolfo and Mimì. Richard Jones’s production evokes the vivid contrasts of fin de siècle Paris, from Bohemian apartments to glittering arcades, while Kevin John Edusei, Evelino Pidò and Paul Wynne Griffiths conduct an array of dazzling performers
Lying in bed, Tsar Dodon dreams of retirement. The problem is, people keep invading his country. His astrologer offers him a golden cockerel with magical powers, a weather vane which indicates from which direction danger will come. In his case, it will be from the East in the shape of a charming oriental princess determined to conquer his kingdom.
Pushkin folk tale as comedic opera whose sultry elements expand an Oriental influence. Korsakov portrays the story of Tsar Nicholas II, punished for his cowardice and despotism, using satire to condemn Russia's autocratic ruler.
The support group for opera addicts is in session, and its participants perform Prokofiev's Betrothal in a Monastery. Rarely performed outside Russia, and consigned to oblivion by Andrei Zhdanov's anti-formalist policies after the Second World War, the work is transformed by Dmitri Tcherniakov's extravagant staging. Under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, an all-star cast featuring Aida Garifullina and Violeta Urmana bring the characters to life on stage at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden.
