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).  

It’s fifty years since the curtain first went up in Prague on Bohuslav Martinu’s comic opera Mirandolina after Goldoni. The work, which recalls Rossini’s motor-rhythms, then fell into obscurity as tastes in styles changed. A rediscovery is long overdue, especially in this anniversary year.

Joseph Haydn has undoubtedly been one of the winners in opera programmes in recent years, and particularly in his anniversary year. Here we take a glance at two of his most popular works: L’isola disabitata and L’infedeltà delusa.