(25.2.2015) Theater Magdeburg is exploring new territory with the first German performance of an opera by the Czech composer Zdeněk Fibich (1850–1900). Nevěsta messinská (The Bride of Messina) receives its first performance on 14 March 2015 in the opera house in Magdeburg. Alongside Smetana and Dvořak, Fibich is regarded as one of the three most important Czech opera composers of the Romantic period.  In his opera, based on Schiller’s tragedy, he follows the intentions of the classical theatre reformer, and combines dramatic choral scenes with convincing role portrayals and the leitmotivic-psychological interpretation of characters and situations.

(28.4.2015) In 1930 Ernst Krenek wrote his opera Kehraus um St. Stephan, in which he sketched an unsparing panorama of the time and its people, in the “manner of Karl Kraus”, as he later described it. The piece was taken up, then in turn rejected and finally only premiered in 1990. The “satire with music” to Krenek’s own libretto reveals a social collection of curios from the years following the lost First World War, when the opportunity for a revolution was thrown away, economic troubles and political uncertainties had a devastating effect and a society of black marketeers and post-war winners developed. The work receives its German premiere at the Stadttheater Gießen on 16 May 2015. The musical director is  Florian Ziemen, and director is Hans Hollmann.

(1.10.2014) A cosmopolitan and Czech - in his manifold work for music theatre Bohuslav Martinů always stays rooted in his native country. In his greatest compositions - from Juliette up to Mirandolina - he created a masterful art of characterization.

(1.10.2014) Three works have just been newly published in the Complete Edition of Jean-Philippe Rameau, celebrating the 250 anniversary of his death: Dardanus 1739, the opera Le Temple de la Gloire after Voltaire as well as Les Fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour, his ballet music from 1747.

(2.10.2014) As its first new production of the 2014/15 season, the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich has programmed Janáček’s Věc Makropulos/The Makropulos Case. The director is Arpad Schilling, and on the podium is the Czech conductor Tomáš Hanus, a renowned Janáček specialist. For this production he has collaborated with Bärenreiter-Verlag to produce a critical new edition, the main aim of which is to reconstruct the version of the premiere given in Brno. The eagerly awaited first performance of this version takes place on 19 October 2014.

(25.3.2014) The French musicologist Paul Prévost sets new standards with his edition of Gounod’s Faust, the first to be based on the previously unavailable composition autograph and the printed edition of 1860. He has painstakingly detailed all the stages of work of the through-composed version which was performed for many decades at the Paris Opéra from 1869. The result of his researches can be heard from 10 May at the Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam. Alex Ollé’s new production is conducted by Marc Minkowski. At the Baden-Baden Whitsun Festival Thomas Hengelbrock conducts Gounod’s masterpiece for the first time, also using the new edition. Bartlett Sher’s new production receives its first performance on 6 June. There is also a spectacular line-up of singers including Charles Castronovo (Faust) and Erwin Schrott (Méphistophélès).

Although the autograph manuscript is still not available to consult, the renowned British musicologist Hugh Macdonald has published a new edition of Bizet’s early masterpiece Les Pêcheurs de perles which is as close to an Urtext edition as possible. For the orchestration of the numbers which are only present in the vocal score, he has used a violin conducting score from the library at the Paris Opera. This also contains sections which were cut before the premiere. The edition also publishes the dialogue texts which were replaced  by recitatives before the 1863 performances, as well as a newly-edited timpani part. Soloists, chorus and orchestra of the Staatstheater Nuremberg conducted by Gábor Káli will present the results of these musicological researches for the first time on 29 April 2016 as part of a series of concert performances.