Handel’s opera Sosarme of 1732 will be performed at the Handel Festival in Halle for the first time using the Halle Handel Edition.

Just a year after its successful premiere at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Miroslav Srnka’s double opera South Pole receives its first performance in a reduced and revised version at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. The theatre’s artistic director Karsten Wiegand directs the legendary race between Robert Falcon Scott and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen in the Antarctic, which Srnka’s composition realizes as a musical conflict between two teams in a tremendous arc of tension. The conductor is Johannes Harneit. The first performance takes place on 27 May 2017. Further performances are planned for 10, 18 and 21 June. (Photo: Vojtěch Havlik)

The Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen is the first opera house to stage Bellini’s masterpiece Norma using the new Bärenreiter edition by Maurizio Biondi and Riccardo Minasi, following on from Cecilia Bartoli’s Salzburg Festival production. The director is Elisabeth Stöppler, and conductor is Valtteri Rauhalammi, to be followed by Rasmus Baumann in later performances. The new production of Norma receives its first performance on 5 March 2016.

Cavalli’s Il Xerse was one of the most successful operas of its day. Now, the turbulent, semi-tragic, semi-comic work is published in its Italian and Paris versions as part of the Cavalli edition.

Following on from the first concert performance of Andreas Jacob’s critical new edition of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila in November 2015 at the Theater Basel, the staged premiere on 4 October takes place in no less a theatre than the Opéra National de Paris. It is this first new production of this opera at Opéra national de Paris for 25 years. At the helm is chief conductor Philippe Jordan, and the director is the much sought-after Italian Damiano Michieletto. Aleksandr Antonenko and Anita Rachvelishivili in the title roles are arousing high expectations, not only amongst French opera fans.

(30.4.2015) This year not one, but two opera volumes from the Halle Handel Edition will be put to the test at both the Handel Festivals in Germany. The Göttingen Festival opens on 15 May 2015 with a new production of Agrippina directed by Laurence Dale and conducted by Laurence Cummings. John E. Sawyer is responsible for the long-awaited new edition. The performance material contains the Venetian version from the 1709 premiere, as well as additional alternative music numbers or numbers not used then. The Halle Festival follows on 5 June 2015 with a new production of the seldom-performed opera Lucio Cornelio Silla of 1713, which Terence Best has edited for the HHA. The Handel Festival Orchestra is conducted by Enrico Onofri, and the director is Stephen Lawless. Two days later, on 7 June 2015, Fabio Biondi conducts his Ensemble “Europa Galante” in a concert performance of Handel’s last stage work Imeneo, with a top-class line-up of soloists. The Dublin version of 1742 will be performed, which Donald Burrows reconstructed in 2002 for the relevant HHA volume.

Antonio Cesti’s opera L’Orontea of 1656 is back on the stage. Oper Frankfurt is including the witty piece in its repertoire, using the new edition by Álvaro Torrente for the first time.