There is still a great deal to discover amongst Christoph Willibald Gluck’s operatic works, beyond the well-known Reform operas. One such work is Telemaco, the Dramma per musica premiered in Vienna in 1756, which combines traditional and progressive stylistic elements in fascinating ways. Tobias Kratzer directs the ‘magic opera’ at the Schwetzingen Rococo Theatre; performers include the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Anu Tali (21, 22, 24 and 26 May).

Zaïs, the fairy-story opera, now published in the complete edition of Rameau’s works “Opera Omnia Rameau”, is characterized by daring musical experiments and the theme of freemasonry.

New gems are constantly emerging from the large output of works by Jean-Baptiste Lully. The latest volumes of the Complete Edition are devoted to music theatre at court and church music for the sun king Louis XIV.

The Handel Festival Halle continued its outstanding series of first performances using newly-published volumes in the Complete Edition with three major vocal works this year: the first of these was the opera Ottone on 3 June (Marcus Creed / Franziska Severin), followed on 7 June by the seldom-performed Occasional Oratorio (MDR Radio Choir and The English Concert, conducted by Howard Arman). The crowning conclusion was Handel’s last oratorio Jephtha on 12 June, also performed the following day at the Göttingen Handel Festival (Salzburg Bach Choir and Handel Festival Orchestra, conducted by Bernhard Forck).

Bild links: Coronation of the Emperor Otto II. and his wife Theophanu, ca. 980

The church opera Ich Hiob („I, Job“) by Thomas Daniel Schlee, who was awarded the Grand Austrian State Prize for Music 2010 earlier this year, has been performed at the Kasseler Musiktage in the Alte Brüderkirche, Kassel. In Ich, Hiob, Schlee bridges the gap between different genres. The entire action of the work centres around the character of Job, “whose profoundly human experience of suffering is”, according to the composer, “familiar to each and every one of us, to some extent at least”. The role of the protagonist in the Kassel performance is sung by Markus Schäfer (tenor), and the conductor is Daniel Geiss.

Soprano Marisol Montalvo and Markus Bellheim (piano) gave the first performance of septemberalbum. lieder für sopran und klavier after texts by Ron Winkler on 7 November at the Kasseler Musiktage. The composer describes Winkler’s lyric poetry as “unagitated, fragile, sometimes rather laconic – simply beautiful”. He has striven to create a music which “should be tender and unassuming, and reflects the vital lightness of these almost wafted words.” septemberalbum received its Swiss Premiere on 15 November in the Gare du Nord in Basel. Philipp Maintz’s opera Maldoror was performed at the Theater Basel until 22 November.

Zurich Opera presents a masterpiece of the comic opera repertoire in the New Year, Gioachino Rossini’s Le comte Ory. The role of the Countess will be sung by star mezzo Cecilia Bartoli. In this new production (first performance: 23 January 2011) the recently-published critical edition by the French musicologist Damien Colas will be heard for the first time. In it, the original version of this opera has been reconstructed with the help of the original performance material. As a result, several numbers differ considerably from the version currently in use and enable us to recognize the references to Il viaggio a Reims more clearly than previously.  A milestone in our understanding of Rossini.