(31.5.2014) The 2014 Handel Festival in Halle again sees two first performances using the Halle Handel Edition (HHA). This year’s new opera production on 6 June features Handel’s seldom-performed Arminio of 1737, conducted by Bernhard Forck and directed by Nigel Lowery. The oratorio Solomon follows a week later, performed on 11 June in the Marktkirche. Top soloists, the Kölner Kammerchor and the Collegium Cartusianum perform, conducted by Peter Neumann. In addition, the Halle Handel Edition (HHA) features prominently in this year’s programme, with Amadigi, Riccardo Primo, Giove in Argo and a revival of the 2013 production of Almira.

Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Castor et Pollux was an outstanding success, though initially in the reworked version of 1754. The performance material for this work is now available. The volume from the Complete Edition will follow.

Gluck’s beginnings as a composer of opera seria are now overshadowed by his ‘reform’ operas. Demofoonte, now being published in the Gluck Complete Works, offers an excellent opportunity for theatres to become more familiar with Gluck’s early works.

After its premiere in 1762, the opera Annette et Lubin became famous throughout Europe. Now a new edition published as part of the OPERA Project offers the opportunity of rediscovering this work.

Der Musikverlag Rai Trade pflegt die Kinderoper als wichtigen Bestandteil seines Kataloges. Es sind Stücke, in denen junge Menschen nicht nur als Publikum gesehen, sondern aktiv in die Produktion einbezogen werden. Vier neue Werke stellen sich vor.

Saving everything for opera. The English composer Julian Anderson pours all his experience into Thebans, which receives its world premiere on 3 May at English National Opera.

(4.5.2015) Ľubica Čekovská has composed a highly successful operatic version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, commissioned by the Slovak National Opera Bratislava. Her opera Dorian Gray, to a libretto by Kate Pullinger, demonstrates a virtuoso approach to dramaturgical form, in particular her device of treating the portrait as an increasingly distorted vocal line has been hailed as “absolutely brilliant”. The timelessly up-to-date story about appearance and reality is being revived at the Bratislava Opera (14.5.2015) and has also been programmed at the Prague Spring Festival on 19.5.2015. – The Slovak composer has been commissioned to write an orchestral work by the Essen Philharmonic. Palingenia receives its premiere on 14 September 2015, conducted by Tomáš Netopil.