Rossini in Wildbad season 2024

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by Opera Charm Team
May 15, 2024

BIOGRAPHY

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INTERVIEW

ROSSINI IN WILDBAD announces the casts of all productions at the annual press conference. 2024 we celebrat the 35th Jubilee Festival from 18-28 July. After small beginnings 1989 the Belcanto Opera Festival has earned remarkable international reputation for repertory and artist discoveries.

The main production Le Comte Ory (Paris, 1828) is led by the team Jochen Schönleber (stage director) and Antonino Fogliani (musical director). Audience favorite Patrick Kabongo plays the title role, his opponents are Sofia Mchedlishvili as Countess Adele and Diana Haller as Isolier. Fabio Capitanucci is the drinking buddy Raimbaud and the French bass, Natanael Tavernier, sings the desperate teacher. The performance aims to be a playful variant of the story about the count’s libertine, in which the women are always one step ahead and let the men’s fantasies run wild. The performances are on the 20th, 25th, 27th July and will be recorded for Operavision. The production comes from the Royal Opera Festival in Krakow and premiered there a week earlier.

In L’italiana in Algeri (Venice, 1813), which is shown as a production by the Akademie BelCanto, with the exception of Emmanuel Franco’s elderly Taddeo, only young scholars from the Academy sing, including the remarkable Turkish bass Dogukan Özkan (Mustafà), who recently appeared as a powerful, virtuoso Maometto II in Istanbul and the young Russian-Ukrainian mezzosoprano Polina Anikina in the title role. Hyunduk Kim as Lindoro was an enchanting young lover in last year’s Signor Bruschino and the two Italian winners of the International BelCantoPrize 2023 are also there: Francesco Bossi as Haly and Camilla Carol Farias as Zulma. The cast is completed by the Ucrainian scholarship holder Oksana Vakula from Graz. José Miguel Pérez Sierra, whose las production of this opera in Santiago de Chile was awarded the best performance of the year in South America, conducts, Jochen Schönleber directs. Premiere is on July 21st. with further performances on July 23rd, 26th and 28th in Bad Wildbad. This performances will also be recorded.

The eagerly awaited modern premiere of the opera Masaniello by Rossini’s friend and colleague Michele Carafa (Paris, 1827, in French) about the tragically ending of Neapolitan fishermen’s revolt is excellently cast with Mert Süngü in the difficult title role and with the young French soprano Catherine Trottmann as his wife Leona. Natanael Tavernier plays the schemer. Four tenors are required in this piece: Luis Magallanes, Hyunduk Kim and Massimo Frigato as well as the two Bel Canto prizewinners Bossi and Farias can be heard again. Nicola Pascoli conducts. The performance will be recorded for SWR.

As opening performance of the 35th festival, Rossini’s great Messa di Gloria will be played on the tower of the Baumwipfelpfad with Kabongo, Süngü, Otohara and Özkan under the direction of José Miguel Pérez Sierra. An incomparable concert in a venue with a remarkable score at sunset.

There is change of the program for the concert Arias for Giovanni David. This concert for one of the legendary tenors of the Rossini era is postponed and replaced this year by a concert for another tenor legend with the title Two Faces of Gilbert-Louis Duprez. Mert Süngü sings arias that were written or specially adapted for Duprez, including Otello by Rossini, Lac des fées by Auber, pieces by Kreutzer and Coccia and canzones from the hand of Duprez himself. After many years, belcanto specialist Alessandro De Marchi is finally conducting again in the festival, and he also accompanies the canzoni on the fortepiano. The concert will be recorded.

The last big concert is the Waldkonzert (forest concert) in a glade surrounded by the high trees of the Black Forest with an excellent acoustic response on the Sommerberg. Here music director Antonino Fogliani conducts Schubert and Rossini. Yo Otahara, this year’s recipient of the Inge Borkh Scholarship in honor of the great dramatic soprano from Mannheim, sings Schubert and Rossini.

All projects are accompanied by the Filharmonia Krakowie.

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Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner comes from a music-loving family. Her first encounter with the opera universe was at the tender age of six. The grandeur of the stage productions and costumes, the backstage chatter, and last, but definitely not least, the music left her in awe, beginning with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The overall feeling that opera awakens in anyone who gets a glimpse into this part of artistic eternity, that each and every day passes the test of time, was what drew her to stay and be a part of this world. The Opera House of Brașov became her second home, and the people who worked there were her second family.

Since then, Alice has devoted her spare time to maximising her musical knowledge through instrumental studies, studying both piano and violin for a short time. In the following years, her number one passion stepped out of the limelight and graciously gave way to Law Studies.
Since 2018 she has been studying Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Her passion for opera, even if it is no longer her top professional priority in terms of career, it has most definitely become her priority during her free time. Wanting to experience the best of both worlds and extend her musical horizons, she regularly attends opera performances throughout Romania and abroad.
With OPERA Charm Magazine, Alice aims to nurture her creative side to help it flourish and bloom and to discover, alongside the magazine’s readers, the fascinatingly complex world of opera.

Currently, she is an LL.M. in Business Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Oana Zamfir

Oana Zamfir is a second year MA student at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts, at the Department of Musicology.

She studied violin for 12 years at the “Stefan Luchian” High School of Art in Botosani, later focusing on the theoretical aspects of music. In 2019 she completed her bachelor studies in Musicology as a student of the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca. Her research during 2018-2019 brought to the forefront elements of the archaic ritual within works of composers who activated during the communist period, giving her the opportunity to start a research internship at the “Carl von Ossietzky” University in Germany. In this context, she recorded conversations with members of the Sophie Drinker Institute in Bremen, and had access to documents directly from the Myriam Marbé archive.

Since 2019 she has been a teacher of Music Education and Theoretical Music Studies, making full use of interactive methods in the musical training of students and working, at the same time, with the children’s choir founded in the first year of her activity.

Her interests include pursuing a degree in interior design in 2020.

Alexandru Suciu

Alexandru Suciu inherited his passion for art growing up in a family of several generations of musicians. He began his musical studies at the “Augustin Bena” School of Music in Cluj, where he studied piano and guitar. Even though his main study direction was philological, his passion for music prevailed. He began his academical journey at the Faculty of Letters of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University, studying Comparative literature and English. He continued by studying Opera Singing at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy. He also graduated the Musical Education section, followed by Artistic Directing at the Musical Performing Arts department.

His multidisciplinary education opened the doors towards research, which is seen both through his participation in national and international conferences and symposia, such as the Salzburg Easter School PhD-forum, organized by the Salzburg Universität or the Silesian Meeting of Young Scholars, organized by the Institute of English at the University of Silesia, as well as the collaboration with Opera Charm Magazine.

During his student years, he won several prizes, including the Grand Prize at the “Paul Constantinescu” National Musical Interpretation Competition, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists’ Union Prize at the same competition, the First Prize and the Schubert Prize at the “Ada Ulubeanu” Competition.

He further developed his artistic skills by specializing in courses and masterclasses held by personalities such as Vittorio Terranova, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Marian Pop, Ines Salazar, Riccardo Zanellato, Paolo Bosisio, Valentina Farcaș and Manuel Lange in contexts such as the Internationale Sommerakademie für Operngesang Deutschlandsberg, Corso Internazionale di Canto Lirico I.M.C. Licata or the Europäische Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Montepulciano. Besides his activity on-stage, he currently teaches Opera Singing Didactics, and Pedagogical Practice within the Department for Teacher Education and Training at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy.

Cristina Fieraru

Cristina is a 24 year-old Romanian soprano & a student at the National University of Music Bucharest, where she pursues the MA program in Vocal Performance.

She made her debut in Pamina from “Die Zauberflöte” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at only 19 years old at the Bucharest National Opera House, as a member of the Ludovic Spiess Experimental Opera Studio. Over the years she made her debut in roles such as Contessa d’Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì & Musetta (La Bohème), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte) in her university’s opera productions.
Her passion and experience extends in the field of choral music, too.

She has been part of our dream team since the fall of 2021. For a good period of time she took care of OPERA Charm’s social media and took you on the monthly journey through the history of opera through our Legends rubric – and a few times through the Theaters around the World rubric.

Her little soul rubric – from 2021 to present – is definitely the Conductors of the Future, where, every month, she gives you the chance to meet a young star of the world of conducting and, of course, to find out what’s the most charming feature of opera in these artists’ views.

BIANCA L. NICA

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