On December 15 and 16, 2018 David Stern offers Shanghai music lovers the 4th annual baroque festival at the Shanghai Symphony Hall, with a performance of Bach’s B-minor Mass with Opera Fuoco and the Tölzer Knabenchor. The work has not been heard in Shanghai since 1918.
Andreas Scholl returns to the festival after a series of performances in 2016. He will be joined by Markus Werba, bass-baritone and three members of Opera Fuoco’s young artist program, Theodora Raftis, Adèle Charvet and Andrés Agudelo. David Stern has previously brought Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Alcina to the festival as well as Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and vocal soloists such as Vivica Genaux, Rafaela Milanese, and Alice Coote. This year’s festival will also include a concert with Paris-based 18th century wind ensemble, Tibiades and a masterclass by French baroque cellist, Jérôme Huile.
David Stern leads this Opera Fuoco production of Nozze di Figaro with the newest members of the Opera Fuoco Young Artists Program in a staging by Alexander Camerlo. It is a pocket-size version of Mozart’s masterpiece, bringing out its youthful and chamber music qualities all while giving the young singers the opportunity to learn these important roles at the highest musical level.
Handel always wanted this oratorio in English to be considered a musical drama. In order to reinforce the dramatic tension and to give Hercules its operatic colors, David Stern proposes an interpretation based on the original manuscript and the reworkings that Handel made in 1749 and 1752.
The Tales of Hoffman bears well the name of its genre: opéra fantastique. The last work of the famed operetta composer, Jacques Offenbach, Hoffman transcends many labels and pre-conceived notions: it is serious as it is comic, dark as it is light, popular as it is introspective and abstract