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CD Carlo il Calvo released

Parnassus Arts Productions is happy to announce the release of the brand-new Carlo il Calvo CD.

The details:

CARLO IL CALVO, Opera by Nicola Antonio Porpora
World premiere recording with Max Emanuel Cencic (Lottario), Franco Fagioli (Adalgiso), Julia Lezhneva (Gildippe), Suzanne Jerosme (Giuditta), Bruno De Sà (Berardo), Petr Nekoranec (Asprando) and Nian Wang (Eduige).

Parnassus Arts Productions (label), Armonia Atenea (orchestra), George Petrou (conductor).

A co-production with BR - Bayerischer Rundfunk.
The premiere of the new staged production Carlo il Calvo took place on 3rd September 2020 at the Margravial Opera House as part of the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival.
Special thanks to The Linbury Trust for their support of Armonia Atenea.

You can order the CD here:

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Announcing Bayreuth Baroque 2023

BAYREUTH BAROQUE OPERA FESTIVAL: 07-17 September 2023
For the first time with two staged opera productions and exclusive concerts

The BAYREUTH BAROQUE opera festival presents its fourth edition and will offer two staged opera productions for the first time in autumn 2023. For the opening of the festival, Max Emanuel Cencic (artistic director) will present us his take on Handel’s Flavio, Re de’ Longobardi. A political satire with which the composer took the stereotypes of the heroic opera in his stride, surprising not only the London audience of the time.
Max Emanuel Cencic will stage the production of Flavio and sing the role of Guido alongside with Julia Lezhneva (Emilia), Yuriy Mynenko (Vitige), Remy Bres-Feuillet (Flavio), Sreten Manojlovic (Gismondo) and Fabio Trümpy (Ugone). Benjamin Bayl will conduct Concerto Köln, who are the residence orchestra of the festival 2023.

The second production takes us back to the birth of opera with Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, which is translated into the 21st century with transcriptions, live electronics and partly newly composed music. Rolando Villazón embodies the title role of this exciting new version of L’Orfeo. In its Germany premiere, Markellos Chryssicos will conduct his orchestra Latinatas Nostra.

Continue reading the PDF with the full program.

Box offices will open at www.bayreuthbaroque.de from 27 January 2023, 9am on.

We’r very much looking forward to welcome you at Bayreuth Baroque 2023 !

Ottone canceled

Max Emanuel Cencic has ruptured a muscle in his leg and, much to his regret, has to cancel the production of OTTONE scheduled at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe. Healing will take eight weeks and therefore make his participating in the rehearsals and preparations impossible.
Max Emanuel Cencic hopes to be able to return onto stage soon and thanks his Karlsruhe audience for their understanding.
(photo not showing the actual man)

40 years on stage (broadcast of concert program Senesino)

On September 10th, 2022, on the occasion of a Gala concert celebrating his 40th stage anniversary at the Markgräfliches Opernhaus in Bayreuth and accompanied by George Petrou and his Armonia Atenea, Max Emanuel Cencic presented his new program Senesino consisting of arias composed by George Frideric Handel for star castrato Senesino.

See here a recording by ARTE.

Danke! Thank you!

Schön, daß Sie bei Bayreuth Baroque 2022 mitdabei waren.
Wir sehen uns von 7.-17. September 2023 bei Bayreuth Baroque 2023.

Thank you for being with us at Bayreuth Baroque 2022.
We'll see again at Bayreuth Baroque 2023, from 7 to 17 September 2023.

BAYREUTH BAROQUE 2022 from September 7 to 18

From September 7th -18th, the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival 2022 will take you on a journey into the dazzling world of the Baroque with 16 events at five venues in Bayreuth. The third edition is dedicated to the Roman opera.

The brilliant start is made by the new production of Leonardo Vinci's Alessandro nell’Indie by the artistic director of the opera festival Max Emanuel Cencic - with an all-male cast. In addition, two concertante operas, an oratorio and 13 concerts present the virtuoso Roman baroque repertoire with stars of the international baroque scene like Franco Fagioli, Bruno des Sá, George Petrou, Jeanine De Bique, Julia Lezhneva and many more. The resident orchestra of this year's edition is {oh!} Orkiestra under the musical direction of Martyna Pastuszka.

For the first time in almost 300 years, Vinci's opera Alessandro nell’Indie about Alexander the Great's campaign in India will be heard in its entirety on the first night of the opera festival at Bayreuth's Margravial Opera House. True to the premiere, there is an all-male cast with Franco Fagioli (Poro), Bruno de Sá (Cleofide), Jake Arditti (Erissena), Dennis Orellana (Alessandro), Stefan Sbonnik (Gandarte) and Nicholas Tamagna (Timagene); music is performed by the {oh!} Orkiestra and the choir of the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival under the musical direction of Martyna Pastuszka. Pietro Metastasio's libretto was set to music almost 80 times, and Wilhelmine von Bayreuth also published an opera based on this popular libretto in Erlangen in 1741.

Bayreuth Baroque will present three more theatrical-concert performances in 2022:

The Festa pastorale Il Nascimento dell'aurora (Sept. 15) by the great Venetian melodist Tomaso Albinoni was written to honor Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel on the occasion of her birthday. The plot of the work, which probably premiered in 1711, mixes allegorical, sweet-natured nothingness with allusions to the War of the Spanish Succession.

Giovanni Bononcini's Griselda will be performed in its entirety for the first time since 1733, with recitative texts by Apostolo Zenos newly composed especially by the composer and baroque specialist Dragan Karolić. The dramma per musica tells the story of Gualtiero, King of Sicily, who loves the shepherdess Griselda, which naturally must lead to conflict due to the order of the estates (Sept. 18).

Since opera, as a secular genre, was at the mercy of papal censorship in 17th-century Rome, oratorios of sacred content became the preferred and most successful works in the Papal States. Like Alessandro nell'Indie, the oratorio San Giovanni Battista by the scandal-ridden composer Alessandro Stradella will be performed in a candlelight concert with an all-male cast, modeled on the premiere (Sept. 14).

Other highlights of this year's edition include gala concerts with Bruno de Sá and Il Pomo d'Oro (Sept. 16), Max Emanuel Cencic celebrates 40 years on stage in Bayreuth with Armonia Atenea, last year's resident orchestra (Sept. 10), Jeanine De Bique comes with Concerto Köln (Sept. 8) and Julia Lezhneva will perform with this year's resident orchestra {oh!} Orkiestra (Sept.17). 

The program is rounded off by many other concerts at historic locations in Bayreuth, including the dinner concert in the Sun Temple of the Orangery in the Hermitage, which was so popular last year. New this year are candlelight concerts in the city and castle churches and, for the first time, three concerts in the Ordenskirche St. Georgen.

Detailed information on all Bayreuth Baroque 2022 events and tickets can be found at: www.bayreuthbaroque.de/