Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Dramma per musica La Semiramide riconosciuta after a libretto by Pietro Metastasio has been staged in october 2008 again 260 years after its premiere in the Vienna Burgtheater. It can be seen from 18 October at the Mainz Staatstheater. Peer Boysen is the director of the co-production with the Hochschule für Musik Mainz, and the musical director is Michael Millard. The orchestral material for this exciting performance project has been specially produced by Bärenreiter publishers, based on the score of the Gluck Complete Edition.

Patricia B. Brauner’s critical new edition of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia is being received with ever increasing interest. The score has been published earlier than announced and the Critical Commentary presents some previously unpublished material, such as arias Rossini wrote later and the composer’s ornamentation to several numbers in the opera. The final chapter of the Critical Commentary contains an entire compendium of contemporary ornamentation, dated and described in collaboration with the American Rossini specialist Will Crutchfield. Three new productions, still to receive their first performances in the current season, are already using the new edition: Leipzig Opera (director: Claus Guth, conductor: Andreas Schüller) starting on 6 June; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London (Patrice Caurier & Moshe Leiser / Antonio Pappano) from 4 July and the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe (Dominique Mentha / Justin Brown) from 11 July.