The master concerts associated with the Heidenheim Opera Festival present a very special event this autumn: the well-known German actress Katharina Thalbach will play the (spoken) title role in Georg Anton Benda’s famous melodrama “Medea”, accompanied by the Cappella Aquileia under the direction of Marcus Bosch. The concert on 27 October in the Congress Zentrum Heidenheim, repeated on 28 October in Fürth, is at the same time the first performance using the critical new edition published by Bärenreiter. Benda’s “Medea” will be heard in the previously unknown late Mannheim version of 1784, which is in many respects more effective. The edition has been edited for the first time by Jörg Krämer for the series “OPERA – Spectrum of European Musical Theatre in Separate Editions.” (Picture: Eugène Delacroix, Medea kills her children (1862), Louvre Paris)

“Naïs”, the lavish opera the French composer wrote for the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, is now being published as part of the “Opera omnia Rameau”.

A contemporary regarded Handel’s opera “Berenice” as just a patchwork, but it has many little gems to offer. In May “Berenice” will be performed again on the operatic stage in Halle.

Handel’s serenata “Parnasso in festa” is a true pasticcio with many re-uses from works composed earlier. Nevertheless, a staged performance, as is planned for the Handel Festival Halle in Bad Lauchstädt is extremely worthwhile.

A confusing plot with a happy ending – that’s Baroque opera, that’s Handel. And it’s the same with “Arianna in Creta”. The Halle Handel Edition of the work offers a whole range of possibilities for the stage.

A number from the Magic Flute which is unknown? Impossible! But there is a duet for Tamino and Papageno which was not part of the well-known sequence. It is now available again.