The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer, for five weeks starting in late July, in Salzburg, Austria, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart's operas are a focus of the festival; one highlight is the annual performance of Hofmannsthal's play Jedermann (Everyman).
The Hamburg State Opera is a German opera company based in Hamburg. Its theatre is near the square of Gänsemarkt. Since 2015, the current Intendant of the company is Georges Delnon, and the current Generalmusikdirektor of the company is Kent Nagano.
The dithyramb was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god. Plato, in The Laws, while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb." Plato also remarks in the Republic that dithyrambs are the clearest example of poetry in which the poet is the only speaker.
Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer and academic teacher. He is musical director of the Institute of New Music and Media at the University of Music Karlsruhe and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival. He was honoured as Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2001. His musical work includes more than 500 works. In 2012, The Guardian wrote: "enormous output and bewildering variety of styles and sounds".
Ensemble Modern is an international ensemble dedicated to performing and promoting the music of modern composers. Formed in 1980, the group is based in Frankfurt, Germany, and made up variously of about twenty members from numerous countries.
Ingo Metzmacher is a German conductor and artistic director of the festival KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen in Hanover.
Angela Denoke is a German opera singer (soprano).
Mojca Erdmann is a German soprano who is particularly associated with the Mozart operas. She created the role of Ariadne in Rihm's Dionysos at the Salzburg Festival.
Stadttheater Minden is a municipal theatre in Minden, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The theatre has no ensemble, but stages some productions of its own. It became known for a Wagner project culminating in Der Ring in Minden.
Dionysian Dithyrambs, also called Dionysus-Dithyrambs, is a collection of nine poems written in second half of 1888 by Friedrich Nietzsche under the pen name of Dionysos.
Sandra Trattnigg is an Austrian opera and concert soprano.
Elisabeth Eleonore Büning is a German music journalist and writer, known for her opera reviews in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Eva Elin Rombo, née Karlsson, is a Swedish operatic soprano. In November 2013 she was named Hovsångerska.
Tanja Ariane Baumgartner is a German operatic mezzo-soprano. A member of the Oper Frankfurt since 2009, she has enjoyed an international career, appearing in major European and American opera houses and the Salzburg Festival.
Georg Nigl is an Austrian baritone in opera and concert, and a professor of voice at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart. Performing internationally, he is known for roles in contemporary operas, such as creating the title role in Pascal Dusapin's Faustus, the Last Night at the Berlin State Opera. He names as his favourite roles Monteverdi's Orfeo, Mozart's Papageno and Alban Berg's Wozzeck.
Johannes Martin Kränzle is a German baritone in opera and concert who has made an international career. For years a member of the Oper Frankfurt, he was chosen as Singer of the Year in 2011 after creating the leading role in Wolfgang Rihm's Dionysos at the Salzburg Festival. He made his debut at the Royal Opera House as Don Alfonso in Mozart's Così fan tutte, and at the Bayreuth Festival as Beckmesser in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 2017.
Christof Loy is a German stage director especially for opera, whose work received several awards. A freelance director, he has staged operas from Baroque to premieres of new works at major European opera houses and festivals. He is known for directing works by Mozart.
Johannes Kalitzke is a German composer and conductor. After studying in Cologne and at the IRCAM in Paris, he was chief conductor at the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen for several years, then led the ensemble musikFabrik and composed operas on commissions in Germany and Austria. He has been Professor of Conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum from 2015.
Renate Behle is an Austrian operatic mezzo-soprano and soprano who made an international career, based in Germany. She was professor of voice at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg from 2000 to 2010.
Der Ring in Minden was a project to stage Richard Wagner's cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Stadttheater Minden, beginning in 2015 with Das Rheingold, followed by the other parts in the succeeding years, and culminating with the complete cycle performed twice in 2019. The stage director was Gerd Heinz, and Frank Beermann conducted the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, playing on the stage of the small theatre. The singers acted in front of the orchestra, making an intimate approach to the dramatic situations possible. The project received international recognition and was compared favourably to the Bayreuth Festival.
