Matthias Goerne

Franz Schubert´s Winterreise engages with its audience in a new and unexpected form. Matthias Goerne, 'the voice of perfection' (Le Figaro), pianist Markus Hinterhäuser and South African director, set designer and theatrical artist William Kentridge joined forces on stage and traced newly imagined, deeply moving images. In short animated films, Kentridge visualises Goerne’s and Hinterhäuser’s sonic contribution. Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, France, July 2015

This production of Hans Werner Henze's opera Upupa & Der Triumph der Sohnesliebe features Laura Aiken, John Mark Ainsley, and Alfred Muff in lead roles. Markus Stenz conducts the Wiener Philharmoniker. Live at the Salzburg Festival 2003.

Motivated by the love that bound him to Mathilda Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s composition of Tristan und Isolde goes far beyond any simple operatic gesture. Peter Sellars’ production pours oil onto this troubled sea of emotions in an almost dematerialised setting bared of all earthly contingencies whilst Bill Viola presents the lovers’ initiatory quest for nirvana in videos detached from the stage, suspended like altarpieces.

Magic opera, Singspiel, a comedy with spectacular stage effects, Masonic ritual with Egyptian mysteries, heroic-comic opera? Die Zauberflöte is heard more often and has been more frequently performed, discussed, queried and interrogated than almost any other work in the history of opera. It is rare for the mysteriousness and multiformity of a work to be adjured with such mantric intensity. It is equally rare for a work to enjoy such undisputed success despite all these debates – and for over two hundred years at that.

A study of a man's physical and mental limitations. In the 24 quite harsh and grueling fragments of the unfinished drama, a body and a mind are tested as far as they can be pushed before their owner goes over the edge. Is there just one thing that proves to be too much for Franz Woyzeck, or is it an accumulation of miseries and torments of a wretched existence? Woyzeck is perhaps not so much a bleak account of how miserable life can be as how much strength is required to deal with the daily vicissitudes of life and how delicate and fragile a balance the human psyche rests on.

"Que serait le monde sans Beethoven ?" C'est la question posée par ce documentaire musical de la Deutsche Welle. Pour y répondre, le film explore comment les innovations de Ludwig van Beethoven continuent d'avoir un impact bien au-delà de la musique classique, 250 ans après sa naissance.