Whitsun Festival Baden-Baden 2023
Whitsun Festival Baden-Baden 2023
What does immortality sound like? It cannot be: Isolde is not dead. She's going away - to another world, to another state, to something that lures us in, that we've been longing for all along. Teodor Currentzis gives a hint of that when he conducts "Isolde's Liebestod" at the Whitsun Festival, from Wagner's rapturous, taboo musical drama "Tristan und Isolde." There is sweet transfiguration without eroticism in the third act of "Parsifal," sung by Bayreuth star Andreas Schager. Also to die for - and also by Wagner, who is at the center of this Whitsun Festival.
Baden-Badeners have always been Wagnerians. In the nineteenth century, the local city council moved mountains in order to provide the composer with a festival hall for his works. The money of the Bavarian king was ultimately the decisive factor and, as is well known, the story turned out differently. But since that time at the latest, the festival idea in Baden-Baden has remained a leitmotif that, like in a Wagnerian music drama, alternately exerted its influence beneath the surface and emerged out in the open, the last time twenty-five years ago when the Festspielhaus was inaugurated.
Such strands of tradition are important to the SWR Symphonieorchester, which will perform Wagner at this year's Whitsun Festival under its principal conductor Teodor Currentzis. In addition, we will get to enjoy chamber music concerts featuring members of the orchestra.
The theme will be the influence of Wagner and the reaction of those who deliberately set themselves apart from him. Without the German composer, for example, there would be no Italian verismo, to which Sonya Yoncheva will be dedicating herself in a festive gala.
About the Festival Baden-Baden
Festspiel Baden-Baden (Baden-Baden Festival) is a series of festivals presented by the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden in Baden-Baden, Germany. The programme is structured around five annual festival periods dispersed throughout the year. The Easter, Whitsun, Summer, Autumn and Winter Festivals each incorporate at least one opera production and several classical concerts.
A typical year contains four festivals of one week each:
Autumn Festival in early October.
Winter Festival from mid-January.
Easter Festival during Holy Week.
Herbert von Karajan Whitsun Festival in late May to early June.
Summer Festival from early July.
Major opera productions at Festspielhaus Baden-Baden to date include La traviata (Valery Gergiev, conductor / Philippe Arlaud, director, 2001), Fidelio (Simone Young, conductor / Philippe Arlaud, director, 2002), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Marc Minkowski, conductor / Macha Makeïeff and Jérôme Deschamps, directors, 2003), The Ring of the Nibelung (Valery Gergiev, musical direction and concept / George Tsypin, stage design, 2003/2004), Rigoletto (Thomas Hengelbrock, conductor / Philippe Arlaud, director, 2004), Parsifal (Kent Nagano, conductor / Nikolaus Lehnhoff, director, 2004) and Die Zauberflöte (Claudio Abbado, conductor / Daniele Abbado, director, 2005).
