Spielzeitpräsentation 2025-2026 Munich 2025 Erika Baikoff, Jessica Niles, Emily Sierra, Granit Musliu
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Spielzeitpräsentation
- Composer: various
- Libretto: various
- Venue & Opera Company: Bayerische Staatsoper, München, Germany
- Recorded: March 16, 2025
- Type: Other
- Singers: Erika Baikoff, Jessica Niles, Emily Sierra, Granit Musliu
- Conductor:
- Orchestra:
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: operlive.de
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- This Recording is NOT AVAILABLE from a proper commercial or public source
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
If we think about the nature of human existence, Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous quote, “we are what we make ourselves to be”, reminds us of the far-reaching responsibility of each and every individual for the shaping of the individual being and their own existence.
The 2025-2026 season runs in harmony with this theme, as each narrative of our new stagings exemplifies processes of self-creation and the consequences of a person’s freedom of choice and freedom to decide. In Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto the tragic, tortured jester is entangled in the webs of revenge and love, and his struggle shows us that every action has effects on our being, sometimes in a calamitous, and only difficult to bear way.
In Charles Gounod’s Faust, we meet a man who is prepared to put his soul on the line to obtain knowledge and power. “He only earns his freedom and existence, who daily conquers them anew (Bayard Taylor translation)”, reminds us the literary original, Goethe’s immortal drama, by impressively demonstrating the dangers of a desire that consumes the soul.
Brünnhilde is also fighting an existential struggle in Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre. She wrestles with the restrictions and contradictions of love and duty – a classic opera conflict therefore, which is expanded into the universal here.
Alcina, the sorceress in Georg Frideric Handel’s eponymous opera, attempts to shape reality according to her wishes. But her magical powers ultimately turn against her.
The supernatural element also appears in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Night before Christmas, where it results in the characters searching for their own happiness being given the opportunity to transform themselves in a world filled with light and shadows.
Hans Werner Henze’s animal parable, Die Englische Katze, addresses the issue of a person’s right to self-determination on the level of social coexistence. The complex interplay between conformity and self-determination becomes the subject matter of a biting satire here.
The world premiere of Brett Dean’s opera, Of One Blood, illustrates two queens caught up in their personal ambitions – Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I. They act contrary to Hannah Arendt’s understanding, according to which power only becomes reality where words and actions are inseparably interwoven with one another.
Quoted from Bayerische Staatsoper