Double Drama with STEMME, KARNEUS AND KRÄNZLE

Nina Stemme! Without the slightest hesitation, she is one of Sweden’s strongest shining stars of opera on the global level. In recent years, she has appeared on stages including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, Vienna State Opera, Opera Bastille in Paris, Royal Opera House in London and opera houses in Stockholm, Zürich, Munich, Barcelona, Houston and San Francisco. She often appears in Wagner roles, such as Isolde in Tristan and Isolde, Brünnhilde in The Ring of the Nibelung and Elisabeth in Tannhäuser.

Together with Swedish Katarina Karnéus and German Johannes Martin Kränzle – who are also internationally acclaimed – we will experience two one-act operas: Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung (with Karnéus) and Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle (with Stemme and Kränzle).

The text and music in Bluebeard’s Castle are strongly influenced by contemporary symbolism and the ideas of Sigmund Freud, something it shares with Schoenberg’s Erwartung to the utmost degree, an opera with unique inherent drama and a distinctive monologue. They are often performed together, which is precisely the case at this concert. The basis for the libretto in Erwartung came from Shoenberg’s own life. His wife Mathilde left him for an affair with the young artist Richard Gerstl, but after a while she chose to come back to Schoenberg. Gerstl hanged himself shortly thereafter in front of a mirror in his studio.