conductor
David Stern is thrilled to come back to Simone Mayr. After having performed his Medea in Corinto, he will be recording his one act opera, Amor Conjugale, which delights and inspires through Bel Canto vocal lines and an imaginative and rich orchestral palette. Look forward to its release on the Aparté label in the next months.
Figaro in the City is a modern-day retelling of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro: “la folle journée” is full of playful and hurtful intrigues that lead up to one of the most moving final scenes in opera history. Opera Fuoco’s young singers step into a staging that takes them away from the confines of a stage and into the city of Paris’ quirky ateliers, streets and gardens. Filmed in playback to allow for theatrical intimacy and the safety of the cast during the Covid-19 pandemic, the camera itself becomes a character, reacting to each turn of the plot. As the instrumentalists and conductor disappear, the characters move fluidly from the opening opera rehearsal atmosphere to a real-life scenario. (more…)
ITHINK Financial Amphitheatre
February 19th 7:30 PM / February 24th 7:30 PM
In February of 2021, Stern will lead performances of La Bohème and the Magic Flute in a 5000 seat open air arena, as part of the first Palm Beach Opera Festival. This innovative project will be key to bringing back live performance in the 20-21 season.
Start date: 8th August 2021
End date: 19th August 2021
Time: 20:00
Location: Shanghai Sympnony Hall
More info
2020/21
Start date: 10th August 2021
End date: 29th August 2021
Start date: 4th February 2022
End date: 8th February 2022
Location: Opéra-Théâtre de Metz (France)
2021/2022
Mozart – Idomeneo
Musical direction – David Stern
Orchestre national de Metz
David Stern's musical leadership is spread across three continents. Whether conducting a major symphony orchestra, baroque opera, teaching vocal master classes or defending cultural activities, Stern keeps his musicians, students and audiences riveted by sharing his strong musical convictions, his flexibility of approach and his belief that music is relevant and indeed essential in today's world. He is the founder and director of the Paris-based opera studio and period-instrument ensemble Opera Fuoco, as well as artistic adviser and chief conductor of the Shanghai Baroque Festival and chief conductor of the Palm Beach Opera in Florida.
Last summer Agence France Presse covered Palm Beach Opera Festival. Find the full report and David Stern’s inteview:
“Ozzy Osbourne stood in the place where I’m conducting,” David Stern, the opera’s chief conductor who will lead both “La Boheme” and “The Magic Flute,” told AFP with a laugh.
Despite its size the space “actually is very friendly,” the Paris-based conductor said, and the star voices large enough to fill the venue whose three-production run — with two performances of each show — will also include “Pagliacci.” (…)
The festival is crafted to fit pandemic times, but Stern said there are lessons to take from what’s intended as a temporary solution.
“Right now we’re catering so much to the audience experience,” he said, which is an exercise in finding ways to “keep opera friendly without mitigating what opera is.”
Find the full article here
David Stern‘s musical life spans three continents, and the pandemic hasn’t slowed him down. As founder and director of Opera Fuoco, a Paris-based international opera company and young artist program, he helms Figaro in the City, a modern-day video retelling of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. It’s available in easily digestible segments of 15 minutes or so at Marquee TV. Stern is also chief conductor of the Palm Beach Opera in Florida, which last month presented its Outdoor Opera Festival, the first large-scale, multi-opera performances (with an audience) in America since the start of the pandemic.
Maestro Stern was kind enough to talk to us about reimagining opera for a young video-obsessed generation while managing the restrictions of physical distancing during the pandemic, and about the challenges and rewards of getting back to live staged opera with an audience while COVID-19 is still assailing the U.S.
Find the full interview here:
https://blogcritics.org/exclusive-interview-maestro-david-stern-opera-fuoco-figaro-city-palm-beach-operas-live-audience-return/
Florian Leopold Gassmann – Ah, ingrato Amor (Opera arias & sinfonias) – CPO, 2020
Ania Vegry / David Stern & NDR Radiophilharmonie
`New releaseOPERA FUOCO – APARTÉ
Opera Fuoco’s latest recording features three former members of the Opera Fuoco studio, Lea Desandré, Natalie Perez, Chantal Santon and the Opera Fuoco orchestra conducted by David Stern. Berenice, che fai? is a compilation of late Baroque and early Classical works based principally on Metastasio’s famous 18th-century opera scene « Ah Berenice » from his opera Antigono.
Not only was the scene set to music by such composers as Haydn and Hasse, but also by Antonio Maria Mazzoni and Marianna Martinez, a composer of Spanish descent who was widely connected to the Viennese music scene and, for a time, lived in the same noble house as Metastasio and Haydn at Grosse Michelstrasse. The young Mozart’s concert aria « Berenice » and Johann Christian Bach’s aria « Confusa, smarrita» from the composer’s lost pasticcio opera, Berenice, as well as Hasse’s Antigono overture complement the program.
Cherubini, Boisselot, Hérold
Karine Deshayes / Opera Fuoco