OH! - “AN EXCLAMATION MARK OF QUALITY”

The Heidenheim Opera Festival from 13 June to 29 July 2018

A brief look at the enthusiastic press

reactions to the last Heidenheim

Opera Festival is enough to make it

immediately apparent that something

remarkable has developed in the past

few years under the artistic direction

of Marcus Bosch: a festival that stands

out impressively amid the monotony

of other summer open-air events and

is now well on the way to becoming an

international trademark. Critics are

already seeing parallels to such

outstanding festivals as Glyndebourne

and Bayreuth, and note that the festival's orchestra very obviously “follows the example set

by Lucerne” by recruiting its members from among “hand-picked and highly motivated”

musicians (concerti). Marcus Bosch is pleased at this recognition of his many years of work

in developing the festival: “I am, of course, delighted to see with what other festivals we are

mentioned in one breath.” All this seems to confirm the message of the PR acronym “OH!”

that has been cleverly chosen for the Opernfestspiele Heidenheim – it fully expresses the

astonishment one has to feel at the way artistic quality and innovative programming

combine here with high audience interest and financial success to create a harmonious

musical whole. The bare figures from the last summer season also speak a clear language:

17,600 visitors, all performances of the “Flying Dutchman” booked out, and 99 percent of

tickets sold for the symphony concerts. Things couldn't get any better. Or could they?

Music, particularly music theatre, is not made in a vacuum, but always in confrontation with

the contemporary socio-political reality. The 2018 Heidenheim Opera Festival will greatly

raise its profile in this regard by taking the motto of “Refuge” as its guiding theme in the

coming summer. The new productions of the two Verdi operas “Nabucco” and “I Lombardi”,

as well that of “Moses' Entscheidung” (“Moses' Decision”), a work for children, will bring

three great narratives to the stage that are dominated “by hope, fear, persecution,

displacement and not least – and despite all – by touching love stories that play out under the

presence of oppressive powers,” says Marcus Bosch. Festival visitors, of course, are free to

decide for themselves what references to the present day they see: “Current world events

seen through the lens of opera? A musical, dramatic intensification that allows us to develop

our own personal view and thus better to evaluate and classify those events? Sharpening our

senses by means of artistic work and experience? I hope so.”

© Thomas Bünnigmann

Giuseppe Verdi's “Nabucco” (première: 29 June 2018) is centered around the Old

Testament figure of King Nebuchadnezzar, a ruler who claims to have divine power and

who, in his megalomania, aims to wipe out entire peoples. This is dramatic material that

could scarcely be any more relevant today: the unconditional desire for freedom and the

fight against oppression are the central dramatic driving force of this opera, which brought

Verdi his breakthrough as a composer and turned him into a “homo politicus” overnight.

The famous “Va, pensiero”, also known as the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”, is seen to this

day as the secret anthem of all those who are oppressed. The main role will be sung by the

South Korea-born Antonio Yang, whose performances of the title roles in Verdi's “Macbeth”

(2015) and Wagner's “Flying Dutchman” (2017) have already been met with an enthusiastic

reception in Heidenheim. The Armenian singer Astghik Khanamiryan, who will sing the role

of Abigaille (in alternation with Ira Bertmann), has been celebrated across Europe for her

dark-toned, powerful soprano voice, with which she won the first prize at the international

vocal competition “Grandi Voci” in Salzburg in 2016. And the character of the high priest

Zaccaria will be taken by the Canadian bass Randall Jakobsh (alternately Pavel Kudinov),

who is proving his competence as a singer of Verdi in the current season at the Leipzig

Opera House as well. “I believe we have again managed to put together wonderful, distinctive

casts,” says festival director Bosch. “Nabucco” will be directed by Helen Malkowsky, who

now enjoys a very high reputation in numerous German theatres from Chemnitz to

Bayreuth. The festival has once more been able to gain the services of the Czech

Philharmonic Choir Brno, which last summer became a true audience favourite (“The

musical icing on the cake for the evening,” wrote the Humanistischer Pressedienst), to take

on the unusually large role given to the chorus in this opera. And the festival director himself

will conduct the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, as in 2017: “With luscious passion, but

no bombast, Bosch and his musicians kindle yearning and inward storms” (Schwäbische

Post).

The Verdi series that was launched two summers ago by the festival's orchestra, Cappella

Aquileia, including live radio recordings (Deutschlandfunk Kultur) and CD release (the 2017

live recording of “Un Giorno di Regno” is to be issued next April) is to be continued with “I

Lombardi” (première 19 July 2018 in the Festspielhaus) in the production by Tobias Heyder.

This opera also has a plot that can easily be projected onto the current era with its

confrontation between Muslims and Christians; in the libretto by Temistocle Solera,

however, this takes place against the historical background of the mediaeval crusades. The

two central roles of the Lombard crusade leaders will be sung by Marian Talaba (as Arvino),

who, as a long-time member of the Vienna State Opera, has already shared the stage with

the likes of Placido Domingo and Edita Gruberova, and Pavel Kudinov (as Pagano), who

performed the role of the Marchese di Calatrava in Verdi's “La Forza del Destino” during last

season at Theater Basel. The Brno choir will be in action here as well, in addition to the

Cappella Aquileia, the orchestra of the Heidenheim Festival, which enjoys an outstanding

reputation and has matured into a specialist Verdi orchestra with its “mind-boggling

precision, wonderful sound and dynamic energy” (SWR 2). The choice of works for 2018

shows the continued high relevance of Verdi's musical stage works to recent social

discourse and makes a contribution to it that is well worth hearing, says Marcus Bosch: “I

think that this double package of Verdi with 'I Lombardi' and 'Nabucco' and the theme of

refuge could not be more fitting for our times.”

With its presentations of children's operas as well, the Heidenheim Opera Festival has long

recognised the signs of the times, a fact attested to by the more than 2,500 visitors (a

record!) to the work it presented last year, “Tortuga”. In 2018, “Moses' Entscheidung”

(première 13 June) is on the programme in the opera tent in the Brenzpark. Librettist Kai

Wessler and director Annika Nitsch, with Sebastian Schwab as music director, use the fight

against injustice and tyranny, and the conflict between generations, as material for a piece

of music theatre that shows the value of standing up for one's aims and convictions and

approaches the festival's motto in a manner tailored to young people.

Many works presented in the symphony concerts at the 2018 Heidenheim Opera Festival

can also easily be seen in relation to the theme of “Refuge”: for example, the clarinet

concerto by the Turkish human rights activist and composer Fazil Say, who has faced

prosecution for his critical views, in the opening concert (24 June, Nuremberg State

Philharmonic Orchestra under Josep Caballé-Domenech, with soloist Reto Bieri) and

Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with the choral finale “Ode to Joy” as an anthem-like message

of humanity and symbol of freedom in the Gala Concert (8 and 9 July with the Cappella

Aquileia under Marcus Bosch). And the festival's theme is also by no means absent from

the festive Gershwin gala as part of the Last Night (28 + 29 July, with the Stuttgart

Philharmonic Orchestra), where excerpts from “Porgy and Bess” will be played, the first

opera to have a cast consisting only of Afro-Americans – and this at a time when there was

strict racial segregation in the USA. The obvious jazz references in Gershwin will not be the

only such sounds at the festival: at the Jazzgala (12 July), there will be a symphonic OH!

concert with a difference in the “Rittersaal” of Hellenstein Castle, when the ECHO-award-

winning composer Christian Elsässer and his band, along with Max Mutzke, take listeners

into a world beyond the conventions of normal big-band jazz.

For concert-goers seeking refuge in chamber music from such massive orchestral sounds,

the 2018 Heidenheim Festival is also worth a visit. The recorder player Stefan Temmingh,

together with Dorothee Mields (soprano) and the lautten compagney BERLIN of Wolfgang

Katschner, will be presenting a specially conceived programme of baroque vocal and

instrumental music in the Pauluskirche (15 July), performed in authentic style. There will be

choral music in the church of Neresheim Abbey with Vokalwerk Nürnberg, an ensemble

founded by Marcus Bosch (22 July, conductor: Andreas Kippert), and in the Schlosskirche,

the Goldmund Quartet will unfold the intimate magic of four-part music making (25 July).

Musical and culinary enjoyment do not necessarily rule one another out, a fact amply

demonstrated by the popular (and quickly sold-out) OH! events such as the “Blauer Abend”,

which will be held twice in 2018 with entertaining musical titbits and a three-course menu,

the Jazz Breakfast, a Verdi Dinner and the traditional open-air “Schlossbergtafel”, to which

visitors bring along their own food or order a basket in advance in the Schlosshotel.

The launch of the extended advance ticket sales on 27 November 2017 has made all this

bulging picnic hamper of musical delicacies available to select from. And as Peter Krause

from concerti.de writes, discerning music fans will be able to find high-quality refuge in

Heidenheim from the otherwise off-season July weeks: “The conductor and festival director

Marcus Bosch and his team prove that quantity and quality, open-air atmosphere and good

opera, listener-friendliness and interpretational rigour, are by no means mutually exclusive,

but in fact mutually dependent! The Heidenheim Opera Festival stands out as an

exclamation mark of quality amid summer festivals that are increasingly dominated by low-

grade art consumption.”