The Hannover-Herrenhausen Arts Festival is offering a real operatic rarity on 26 June with Francesco Cavalli’s dramma per musica  L'Artemisia, first performed in Venice in 1657. For the first performance in modern times, Cavalli specialist Hendrik Schulze has prepared a critical edition which Claudio Cavina and his ensemble La Venexiana use in their interpretation. A further performance is planned for 24 July at the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, which will be followed by a CD recording. The full score and performance material of L’Artemisia are published by Bärenreiter in their new series “Opere di Francesco Cavalli”.

Ambroise Thomas initially conceived the role of Hamlet for high male voice, and wrote the first sketches in the tenor clef. When it became known that the charismatic singer-actor Jean-Baptiste Faure was to play the part of Hamlet, the composer adapted the existing music for bass-baritone. Soon after the premiere in 1868 at the Académie Impériale de Musique in Paris, a vocal score of the tenor version was published, endorsed by Thomas, which he had probably even made himself. Reconstructed from the sources by Hugh Macdonald as part of his new edition of “Hamlet” for Bärenreiter · Alkor, this version can be heard for the first time on 15 July at the Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier. The American star tenor John Osborn sings the role of the Danish Prince. Michael Schønwandt conducts the chorus of the Opéra and the Orchestre National Montpellier Occitanie. The concert performance will be broadcast by Radio France at a later date.

Michael Jarrell’s music theatre work Le Père has been created after the text “Der Vater” from Heiner Müller’s “Germania Tod in Berlin”. It represents a focal point of musical and poetic themes which the Swiss composer has contemplated intensively over a long period. The first performance took place on 3 June 2010 at the Schwetzingen Festival. Gilles Privat played the role of the Father, and the other performers were the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and Les Percussions de Strasbourg. The director was André Wilms.

The Opéra Comique in Paris has announced an exciting rediscovery: Hector Berlioz’s French-language arrangement of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz. No less than Sir John Eliot Gardiner will conduct the new production by Dan Jemmett, once again working with his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir. The first night is on 7 April, followed by further performances on 9, 11, 13, 15 and 17 April.

Thomas Adès’ setting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, his second music theatre work following the internationally-successful chamber opera Powder Her Face, is shortly to receive its first performances on the German stage; on 10 January 2010 at the Oper Frankfurt (conductor: Johannes Debus, director: Keith Warner), followed on 12 March 2010 at the Oper Lübeck (conductor: Philippe Bach, director: Reto Nickler). On 11 January, the Ensemble Modern performs Thomas Adès’ The Origin of the Harp in a concert in the series "Happy New Ears" in the Holzfoyer at the Oper Frankfurt, conducted by the composer.

The Frankfurt Opera opens the new season with two music theatre works which could scarcely be more different: Othmar Schoeck’s classical drama Penthesilea (after Heinrich von Kleist) is staged in the much-praised Basel production by Hans Neuenfels (first performance 4 September 2011, musical direction Alexander Liebreich) and the opéra bouffe L’Étoile by Emmanuel Chabrier (photo), recently performed several times in Germany and abroad using the new Bärenreiter critical edition. In Frankfurt, David Alden directs this French operatic jewel. The music director is Henrik Nánási, the future chief conductor of the Komische Oper Berlin (first performance 2 October 2011).

“People are on a journey through present-day Egypt; whilst searching for its origins, they encounter their own wilderness as an absence of memory...” Thus Beat Furrer describes the plot of Wüstenbuch. His new music theatre piece after texts by Händl Klaus, Ingeborg Bachmann and others receives its first performance at the Theater Basel in a production by Christoph Marthaler on 15 March. The first German performance takes place at Maerzmusik Berlin on 27 March. Before then, on 12 February, at Eclat 2010 in Stuttgart, Begehren was performed in a staged production by the Ensemble Modern and the SWR Stuttgart Vocal Ensemble conducted by Beat Furrer, with sets designed by rosalie. At the Konzerthaus Wien Xenos III for Percussion and Chamber Orchestra was premiered on 1 March by Ensemble Resonanz and Dirk Rothbrust (percussion).