Verdi's drama of revenge, in its stunning new production by David McVicar, is filled with some of the composer's most celebrated music. Sir Edward Downes conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House with a cast which includes Paolo Gavanelli, Marcelo Alvarez, and Christine Schäfer.
This production of Strauss’s most sumptuous work by director Nathaniel Merrill and designer Robert O’Hearn is almost as beloved as the opera itself. It perfectly captures the glittering never-land of rococco Vienna the way the Viennese—and the rest of the world—wish it had been, and it’s the ideal setting for an adult comedy of love and errors. Susan Graham is the aristocratic young Octavian, torn between two women: Renée Fleming as the Marschallin, the mature woman who understands that one day Octavian must leave her; and Christine Schäfer as Sophie, the young girl who unexpectedly captures his heart. Kristinn Sigmundsson is the lecherous Baron Ochs who sets the whirling plot in motion, and Edo de Waart conducts.
George Frederic Handel's oratorio Theodora, in its first-ever staged version at the Salzburg Festival, was among the highlights of Handel Year 2009. Acclaimed director Christof Loy presented Theodora as the profoundly moving tale of a woman who prefers death to denying her faith, an interpretation captivated with bravura by world-renowned video director Hannes Rossacher. A luminous Christine Schaefer and countertenor Bejun Mehta formed a perfect leading couple altogether suited to conductor Ivor Bolton's vigorus reading.
This deliciously dark take on the beloved Brothers Grimm fairy tale, appealing to audiences of all ages, was part of the Met’s popular English-language holiday series. Alice Coote and Christine Schäfer star as the famous siblings lost in the woods, who battle the ravenous Witch—a zany portrayal by tenor Philip Langridge—while the Met orchestra, under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski, glories in the rich, folk-inspired score.
Don Giovanni's list of romantic conquests reaches into the hundreds. But his reputation as a lothario puts him in danger as the women he's betrayed -- and their suitors -- begin to seek revenge. A modern-day setting proves the timeless nature of Mozart's popular opera, performed with the Vienna Philharmonic as part of an epic presentation of all 22 of the composer's stage works at the 2006 Salzburg Festival, in honor of his 250th birthday.
This release contains the celebrated 2006 production of Mozart's Nozze di Figaro that was directed for the stage by Claus Guth at that year's Salzburg Festival. Ildebrando D'Arcangelo takes the title role, and gets support from Anna Netrebko as Sussanna, Bo Skovhus as Il Conte Di Almaviva, and Dorothea Roschmann as La Contessa. Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts the orchestra.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt leads the Concentus Musicus Vienna and Arnold Schoenberg Choir in a concert of Bach music at Austria's Kloster Melk Benedictine Monastery. Works included in this celebration of the coming of Christmas are Cantata BWV 61, "Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland"; Cantata BWV 147, "Herz und Mund"; and Magnificat in D Major BWV 243. Soloists are Christine Schafer, Anna Korondi, Bernarda Fink, Ian Bostridge, Christopher Maltman. With the Concentus Musicus Vienna and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir.
In the film One Night. One Life, based on the cycle Pierrot Lunaire, Arnold Schönberg’s opus 21, director Oliver Herrmann has created a surreal, at times grotesque dream world set in a modern city, through which Pierrot moves like a spirit. In each new number she passes through different scenes and levels of the world around us: such as an abattoir, a peep-show, a station or a supermarket.
In Dichterliebe (2000), a film by Oliver Herrmann based on Robert Schumann’s song-cycle of the same name, the boundaries between song recital and reality blur. The chosen setting – a night club in the centre of Berlin – creates the intimate, dark salon atmosphere in which the songs might also have been performed at the time they were written. Returning to origins in this way, the film departs from the concert atmosphere in which song-recitals are normally performed nowadays.
The annual New Year’s Eve Concert is one of the highlights in the calendar of every classical music fan in Berlin and beyond. On New Year‘s Eve, the Berliner Philharmoniker invite an exceptional soloist for a festive gala. Together, the musicians bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new. The 1998 concert was conducted by Claudio Abbado and featured Marcelo Álvarez (tenor), Mirella Freni (soprano), Simon Keenlyside (baritone), Christine Schäfer (soprano) performing: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro (Excerpts), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Don Giovanni (Excerpts), Georges Bizet: L'Arlésienne (Excerpts), Gioachino Rossini: La gazza ladra: Overture, Giuseppe Verdi: Rigoletto (Excerpts), Giuseppe Verdi: Un ballo in maschera (Excerpts), Hector Berlioz: Le Carnaval Romain, Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin (Excerpts), Giuseppe Verdi: La Traviata (Excerpts).
Christine Schäfer is a German operatic soprano. She studied from 1984 until 1991 at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin. Her repertoire contains several baroque operas, Bach cantatas, and many of the great Mozart roles, along with modern pieces. In 1995, she performed to great acclaim during the Salzburg Festival as Lulu in Berg's opera of that name, a part she would later sing at The Met and at Glyndebourne.
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