Description
Die tote Stadt
Korngold
Opera Australia presents the Australian stage premiere of Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, starring German Heldentenor Stefan Vinke and Australia’s own Cheryl Barker.
Photographs, paintings, a lock of hair. Paul clings to the memory of his dead wife, caught between a happy past and an uncertain future. Can Marietta, who bears an uncanny likeness to his dead wife, help him leave the shadowlands? Or is it a journey he must make all by himself?
Presenting the Australian stage premiere of Die tote Stadt, directed by Bruce Beresford, designed by John Stoddart, and conducted by Christian Badea.
Korngold is best known as a masterful film composer, having scored such classics as The Sea Hawk starring Errol Flynn. His operatic music shows the influence of Puccini and Richard Strauss with its huge orchestra and soaring vocal writing. Die tote Stadt, ‘The Dead City’, is a little known masterpiece of the twentieth century.
The phantasmagorical plot and the physical demands on the central character mean it is very difficult to stage and very difficult to sing. Yet it contains some of the most impossibly lovely music written for the stage. By turns lush and exuberant, tender and lyrical, Korngold writes music which maps the human heart.
This production breaks new ground for opera in Australia. On stage, pictures come to life using the latest digital technology. Off stage, Korngold’s sumptuous orchestral textures will fill the Opera Theatre with state-of-the-art cinematic surround sound, coming from a live performance from the Studio, Sydney Opera House.
See Dame Kiri te Kanawa perform the aria ‘Marietta’s Lied’ from Die tote Stadt.
Performed in German with English surtitles.
Venue: Opera Theatre
Dates: 30 June – 18 July, 2012.
Duration: Approximately two hours and forty minutes with one twenty-minute interval.
Visit Opera Australia for more information on their 2012 season.
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