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Cosi fan tutte at Mannheim Mozart Week 2003

The third annual Mannheim Mozart Week took place at the National Theater between 30 November and 6 December. Adam Fischer worked very hard and conducted 5 out of the 7 performances during the week.

The opening this year was a premiere performance of the new production of "Cosi fan tutte".
This is the fourth Mozart production at Mannheim since Adam Fischer became the GMD.
Matthias Schonfeldt produced the last three works but this time it was staged by Mannheim's
own theatrical director Jens-Daniel Herzog.

It was a modern production set as an everyday story. Herzog took the text seriously but included a lot of fun. The whole theme was exactly as the title "it is what women do". Two sisters did many small things that regular girls in love do. It was something like the TV program "Big Brother". The choir and audience were the viewers of the experiment, to see
how long the two sisters can resist seduction.

There were a lot of laughs already during the first act. But Despina's Aria in the second act was so funny. She came down to the pit and made mischief in the orchestra, climbed up to the podium and finally kidnapped the conductor Adam Fischer and disappeared. While audiences were wondering what was next, Adam hurried back to the podium just before the next Aria.

Rosita Kekyte (Fiordiligi) and Daniela Sindram (Dorabella), both role debuts sang a remarkable duet. Markus Eiche (Guglielmo) and Johannes Chum (Ferrando) sang attractive young men. Iris Kupke was a mischievous Despina and Winfried Sakai sang a very comical Don
Alfonso. Best of all was the orchestra conducted by Adam Fischer. With strong accents and dynamic tempo, it was really exciting. Starting with a wonderful overture, it sounded just like Mozart wanted.

Although the performance took more than 3 hours, from the beginning to the end, there were full of fun and high quality music. This production is definitely a candidate for "Opera production of the year".

Other Adam Fischer performances were Mannheim productions of "Magic flute", "La clemenza di Tito" with Vesselina Kasarova as Sesto, and two guest performances by the Danish Radio Sinfonietta. ("Davidde penitente" and "Il re pastore").

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International Haydntage 2003

IThe International Haydntage have become very popular these days and regularly achieve the high position of "Best Chamber Music Festival" in the magazine "Festspiel ". This year's festival took place at Eisenstadt in Austria between 11 and 21 September, under the theme of "Beethoven and Haydn". In addition to Adam Fischer and the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, guest appearance by three famous British conductors, Trevor Pinnock, Richard Hickox and Sir Neville Marriner attracted a lot of international music lovers.
Since the opera for this year was the revival of "Philemon & Baucis" with period instruments, the Haydn Orchestra did not play. Instead, they had three concerts in the Haydnsaal. The first concert on Saturday 13 September was of Beethoven Symphony No. 7 and Haydn Symphony No. 100 "Military". Compared to Haydn which the orchestra plays regularly, the orchestra had not played Beethoven for a long time. During the rehearsals, the orchestra was not confident because of that, however, the performance was totally different and played a very energetic Beethoven.

Most of audience knew that Military Symphony was named after the trumpet solo in the second movement. But when the soloist played from the balcony in a costume, everybody was surprised. It was typical Adam Fischer's humorous interpretation. As an encore, the orchestra played the 2nd movement of the Surprise symphony.
The second concert was Symphony No. 86 and the "Harmonie" Mass with the Vienna Singverein. The choir was little too big for small Haydnsaal, and sometimes the balance between choir and orchestra was not perfect, but the soloists Ildik·Raimondi, Elisabeth von Magnus, Kurt Azesberger and Andreas Jakowitsch were wonderful. It was the artistic highlight of the festival.

The final matinee was the most popular concert. Starting with a tragic introduction, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 was exciting. Then second half, Haydn's "London" symphony was full of Adam Fischer's own ideas. For example at the beginning of the 4th movement, the horn supported the continuous tone, normally played only by the double bass.

As usual, Adam Fischer thanked the audience and concluded the festival by playing the Adagio from the "Farewell" symphony

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Ring Cycle at Bayreuth and the Vienna State Opera

ICalled "the most expensive sauna in Germany", the Bayreuth Festival 2003 took place in record-breaking temperatures. The third year of Adam's Ring was as usual very successful. Especially the first act of "Die Walk·e" was one of supreme performance that people don't hear frequently even at Bayreuth. Ensembles were almost same as last year except a new Loge (Arnold Bezuyen) and Hagen (Peter Klaveness). The best singer this year was Alan Titus who sang Wotan. Because of his convincing performance, the first three works are better than last year. It was pity that some of brass instruments are not in tune due to the heat.

This year the Vienna State Opera has only one Ring cycle. Some singers at Bayreuth appeared at Vienna but in different roles. Evelyn Herlizius, Br·nhilde at Bayreuth sang an eccentric Sieglinde. Arnold Bezuyen was Froh in a strange white costume. Mihoko Fujimura sang her signature role Fricka.
The Br·nhilde at Vienna was Deborah Polaski. Compared to young Herlizius, Polaski has more experiences and confident in singing, however, acting was not so impressive. An American tenor Christopher Ventris made a success role debut of Siegmund. Well known in Mannheim, Daniela Denschlag sang a good Erda.

Ever since the premier, this production was not well received by audience and critics in Vienna. The Intendant Mr. Holender has decided to make a new production during 2007-2009.

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Vienna State Opera "Andrea Chenier"

In the beginning of June the Vienna State Opera had revival performances of Giordano's opera "Andrea Chenier". The production by Otto Schenk, stage build Rolf Glittenberg has been performed here more than 70 times. It was included in the schedule a few years ago but due to the cancellation of a major role, the opera director abandoned the revival. Originally the revival was planned as the farewell performance of Placido Domingo but he stepped down in the early phase. The substitute tenor Sarvador Richtora also cancelled just before the performance. Finally, the famous Wagner-tenor, Johann Botha took over the title role Andrea Chenier. The Bayreuth Sieglinde, Violeta Urmana sang the heroine Maddalena di Coigny, Lado Ataneli sang Carlo Gerard.

"Andrea Chenier" is a love story between the poet who lived during the French Revolution and Maddalena di Coigny who belonged to aristocratic society. Former servant and hero of Revolution Gerard tried to possess Maddalena. The synopsis reminds us of Puccini's Tosca. In fact, "Andrea Chenier" was composed first and Giordano accused Puccini of stealing the idea.

This is an opera that relies heavily on the three major roles. Since two of three singers had never sunged these roles, Adam Fischer himself was a little worried. However, much applause and bravos from the impressed audience stopped the performance several times. Especially the final duet of Chenier and Maddalena was so beautiful as they walked the way to the guillotine.

While Johan Botha and Violeta Urmana stood and sang, Lado Ataneli acted dynamically and performed an impressive Gerard.

The Vienna State Opera is known for very traditional productions. The stage sets and costumes are so gorgeous that it is the reproduction of historic Paris. Unfortunately, because of the large stage sets, it took long to change the scenery. Therefore there were two intermissions after the 1st and 3rd acts; in addition almost 5 minutes break between 2nd and 3rd acts. It was a pity that these long breaks prevented the audience from concentrating.

Adam Fischer's next appearances at Vienna State Opera are "Der Ring des Nibelugen" cycles in late September and October.

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"The Magic Flute" in Zurich and Munich

"The Magic Flute" is the most popular opera in German speaking countries. The simple story of encouraging the good and punishing the evil makes easy to understand for children. Many opera houses plan matinees so that families with children can see the performance. Adam Fischer had conducted two different productions of "the Magic Flute" during May and June.
The Zurich Opera production was produced by Jonathan Miller. The stage set was as if in a stone-made-library. The production itself is somewhat conservative but there were some modern elements. for instance, instead of a large snake, a topless young woman with a small snake tried to seduce Tamino.

Singers are in general at high level, but in this production, Papageno sang by Anton Scharinger was in the center role. In the second act, the conversation with the priest or old woman (Papagena) was very funny. During one Aria, he drunk one entire litre of Wine (or maybe grape juice) but still sang wonderfully. When Adam Fischer played the wood pipe instead of him, Papageno applauded and said a joke "Not bad for a conductor". He was definitely in charge of the performance.

On the contrary, the Munich production of "the Magic Flute" was originally produced by August Everding in 1978. The 23 year old production was highly conservative. It is just like the original script stated for example, animals danced when Tamino played the flute, or during duet of Papageno and Papagena children came on the stage. While most of German opera houses produce new interpretations by young directors, however, this traditional production is rather rare.

All the singers were very good especially the Queen of the night by Dian Damrau. With beautiful coloratura she sang her difficult two areas with no problem. In addition Pamina by Aga Mikolaj was melodic and had good performance. Compare to the Zurich production, Papageno was rather quite and not so impressive. I was surprised by t how the produc-tion makes such a difference to the work.

Next season, Adam will conduct "Le nozze di Figaro" in October at Zurich, and "Fidelio" at Munich next May.

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Concert at Musikverein by Haydn Orchestra

In the past few years Haydn Orchestra frequently appeared at Konzerthaus Vienna. This year they had a concert at the Large Hall at Musikverein for the first time.

Since the concert on 3rd of March was a part of Musikverein subscription concert series, the concert got attention that the newspaper by Musikverein had the special article about the concert and Adam Fischer. (In the article, they introduced our home page.)

The concert started with Adam's favorite Haydn's Symphony No. 88. With the accent not written in the score, orchestra performed sometimes very dynamically and sometimes comically. Especially the outer movements are full of fascinating ideas and the orchestra played lively and clearly.

The next piece was Mahler's "Songs of a Wayfarer" with the baritone Bo Skovhus who is well known to Viennese at State Opera. With a big contrast between first piece, Adam conducted not too much accent and let the singer in the foreground. Skovhus presented a beautiful interpretation on details in a convincing voice.
The last piece was Haydn's "The clock" Symphony. Compare to earlier No. 88, this piece was rather traditional interpretation but still, there were many new ideas even for new to the Musikverein audience. Answering the enthusiastic applause, the orchestra played Figaro overture as an encore.

The concert was a great success and even the local critics applauded very much. For instance, "This was a very fun concert that the classical music possibly can." (Kronen Zeitung), " The performance reviving Haydn's spirit who understood the humor" (Die Presse). The concert was live-on air by ORF1.

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Boris Godunow" New Production in Mannheim

"The second new production by Adam Fischer at Nationaltheater Mannheim 2002/03 season, "Boris Godunow" was successfully premiered on 7th of February 2003.

Although Adam Fischer is a great maestro of opera world, his main stream is German and Italian operas. This is the first time for him to conduct "Boris". His past experiences were as the member of children choir at Budapest National Opera House. This is the co-production with Opera national de Lyon and for the first time in his carrier, Adam collaborated with his own brother Ivan. Because of this reason, even "The New York Times" reported it in the article about Fischer brothers.

More than 4 hours and almost 20 soloists plus a lot of chorus members, the great Russian masterpiece was very powerful and a big success with a endless curtain calls.

The producer Philipp Himmelmann ("Bluebeard's Castle" at Mannheim, "La vera costanza" at Eisenstadt) placed a huge staircase at the center stage and used it effectively as a part of Boris's Castle or the abbey where Grigori heard the story of Dimitori. When changing scenes, using horizontal and vertical curtains together was a very effective to keep the attention focused on the center of the stage.

One of best soloists in the production was, of course title role Boris sang by Mihaly Mihaylov. Especially the death scene was very dramatic and convincing. Winfried Sakai, who is very good at evil characters such as Alberich or Klingsor, sang a very powerful bad monk Waarlam. The Gottesnarr by Matthias Wohlbrecht played the key role of entire production.

The hidden main character of this work was the Russian people performed by the Choir of Nationaltheater Mannheim (Chorus conductor Bernhard Schneider). Powerful chorus of the prelude and final act were especially good. Nationaltheater Orchestra by Adam Fischer was so dramatic that especially after the scene of Boris's death, the whole audience many of them don't understand Russian language, were very much impressed and gave a big applause to all the performers and producers.

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