Christian Thielemann. Principal Conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden from 2012 Artistic Director of the Salzburg Easter Festival from 201

Christian Thielemann to be the Artistic Director of the Salzburg Easter Festival from 2013 to 2017.

The Salzburg Easter Festival is extraordinarily fortunate to be able to announce that at very short notice it has found an outstanding new Artistic Director in the person of Christian Thielemann, who will assume overall responsibility for the Festival’s artistic programming from 2013 up to the jubilee season of 2017, where we shall be marking the the Salzburg Easter Festival’s fiftieth anniversary. This does however not preclude the option of extending the new arrangement beyond 2017.

Christian Thielemann’s repertory is wide-ranging, extending, as it does, from Bach to Hans Werner Henze and Sofia Gubaidulina. His performances of the German Romantic operatic and symphonic repertory are universally regarded as exemplary
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With Christian Thielemann as its Artistic Director, the Salzburg Easter Festival is not only sending a clear signal for a new beginning at the highest possible artistic level but also continuing its existing tradition with an artistically outstanding figure at the head of his orchestra of choice. To the extent that Christian Thielemann worked as Herbert von Karajan’s musical assistant at an early point in his career it is a particular stroke of good fortune that he will ensure that the Festival continues to operate on the very highest level as set by its founder.

The Staatskapelle Dresden to provide the Salzburg Easter Festival’s orchestra on residence from 2013 to 2017.

Peter Alward, Eliette von Karajan, Christian Thielemann. Foto: (c) Erika Mayer

Christian Thielemann will become principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden in 2012. From 2013 until 2017 he and his orchestra will also form the musical backbone of the Salzburg Easter Festival.

Together they will work on new opera productions and concert programmes specially designed for Salzburg. The fact that it has been possible to engage this orchestra at such short notice is due to the extraordinary commitment of our colleagues in Dresden. Dresden and Salzburg have been twinned since 1991, and it is particularly gratifying that these links can now be intensified as the result of this new artistic partnership.

Klavierprobe zu den EMI-Aufnahmen für Der Fliegende Holländer, Berliner Philharmonie, 1982. V. l. n. r.: Peter Hoffmann, Herbert von Karajan, Peter Alward, Christian Thielemann, Michel Glotz (Aufnahmeleiter), José van Dam. Foto: © Siegfried Lauterwasser; Karajan Archiv

The Staatskapelle Dresden was founded in 1548 and can look back on a tradition that is second to none. Equally distinguished in the opera house as it is in the concert hall, it can number Heinrich Schütz, Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner among its music directors, while Richard Strauss was closely associated with the orchestra for more than sixty years. Among its most eminent principal conductors since then have been Karl Böhm, Kurt Sanderling, Herbert Blomstedt, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Bernard Haitink. From 2007 to 2010 the general music director of both the Dresden State Opera and Staatskapelle Dresden was Fabio Luisi. Sir Colin Davis has been the orchestra’s conductor emeritus since 1990.

The Staatskapelle Dresden has a long tradition of performing in Salzburg, where it has made regular appearances for concerts, opera performances and week-long residences since 1923. Herbert von Karajan first invited the orchestra to appear at the Summer Festival in 1961 and since then it has appeared in the town not only under Karajan himself but also under Franz Konwitschny, George Szell, Karl Böhm, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Seiji Ozawa and others. In 2002 the Staatskapelle Dresden took part in staged performances of Richard Strauss’s Die Liebe der Danae, returning in 2003 for concert performances of the same composer’s Die ägyptische Helena and in 2006 for concert performances of Strauss’s arrangement of Mozart’s Idomeneo.

New opera productions at the Salzburg Easter Festival from 2013 to 2017 in  co-productions with the Semperoper Dresden

The Salzburg Easter Festival’s new opera productions between 2013 and 2017 will be co-productions with the Semperoper Dresden. The Staatskapelle Dresden will appear under the musical direction of Christian Thielemann. Each new production will open in Salzburg before being presented in Dresden.

Opera in Dresden can look back on a long history. The first opera house was opened in 1667, but even before that date the first German-language opera, Heinrich Schütz’s lost Dafne, had already been performed by the Saxon Court in 1627. Dresden later became a leading European centre of opera under the Court Kapellmeister and composer Johann Adolph Hasse, who built up an outstanding ensemble.

The Royal Saxon Court Theatre opened in 1817 and was used not only for spoken drama but also for Italian and, finally, the German musical repertory. Carl Maria von Weber ran the German company
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Richard Wagner was appointed Kapellmeister to the Royal Court of Saxony in 1843. Three of his operas, Rienzi, Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser, were premièred by the Royal Saxon Court Theatre between 1842 and 1845.

Under the leadership of Ernst von Schuch, who was the general music director from 1889 to his death in1914, more than forty world premières were given, including Strauss’s Salome, Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier. Between 1914 and 1938 five more Strauss operas received their first performances in Dresden. Schuch’s successor, Fritz Busch, was responsible for introducing more modern works to the repertory, including the world premières of works by Kurt Weill and Hindemith and the local premières of many other works.

Gottfried Semper’s first opera house from 1841 burnt down in 1869 but was replaced in 1878 by a second house built according to Semper’s designs. This building was destroyed in bombing raids in 1945, and for the next forty years the Dresden Opera had no house of its own until the present building was opened in 1985, an exact replica of Semper’s 1878 designs.

About the Programme of the Salzburg Easter Festival from 2013 to 2017 .

Wagner’s Parsifal will be the first joint opera production bring together the Salzburg Easter Festival’s new Artistic Director, Christian Thielemann, the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Semperoper Dresden will take place in 2013 with a new production of Wagner’s Parsifal directed by Michael Schulz. Sets and costumes will be designed by Alexander Polzin. The distinguished cast will include Johan Botha as Parsifal, Stephen Milling as Gurnemanz and Wolfgang Koch as Amfortas.

Myung-Whun Chung, the Staatskapelle’s principal guest conductor designate, has been engaged to conduct one of a pair of the subscription concerts in 2013. The soloist will be the pianist Evgeny Kissin.

There will also be an important new addition to the structure of the festival period from 2013: Between the two subsctiption cyles there will be a special concert performed by the Staatskapelle Dresden, entitled Concert for Salzburg. It is targeted especially at a young audience as well as the general public in both Salzburg city and its surrounding region. The tickets will be available at a specially low price.

The Salzburg Easter Festival’s young people’s programme will also continue to play a major part in future plans.

Eliette von Karajan, Christian Thielemann. Foto: (c) Erika Mayer

Programme details for the seasons between 2013 and 2017 are currently being discussed by Christian Thielemann and Peter Alward with their partners in Dresden and will be announced in due course.