WAGNER GALA

Orchestra of the Tiroler Festspiele Erl
Musikalische Leitung: Asher Fisch
Sieglinde: Ekaterina Gubanova
Siegmund: Jonas Kaufmann
Hunding: René Pape

Die Lebensgefahr mit Wagner wegpusten. – „Was anderes ist unser Leben, als eine Reihenfolge von Präludien zu jenem unbekannten Gesang, dessen erste und feierliche Note der Tod anstimmt?“, schreibt Liszt zu seinen „Préludes“, die wir dem ersten „Walküren“- Akt voranstellen. Liszt liefert also das Vorspiel zur Geschichte von Sieglinde und Siegmund, die tödlich enden wird. – Abgesehen vom ersten Akt: In der liebesfeindlichen Welt Hundings treffen die beiden Ausgestoßenen aufeinander. Ihre heftige Verliebtheit übergießt Wagner mit satten, orchestralen Wonnenschauern. Die sprengen nicht nur jedes Maß, sondern auch wortwörtlich Hundings Haustür.

Franz Liszt
Les Préludes
Franz Liszt
Mazeppa
Richard Wagner
„Die Walküre“ – 1. Aufzug

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Team

Orchestra of the Tiroler Festspiele Erl

The music springs from the enthusiasm of a motivated and exceptionally well-prepared ensemble that has grown together over the years. The Tyrolean Festival Erl Orchestra was first formed in the summer of 1999—and today, musicians from 20 nations play together. Already in its first year, the ensemble achieved unprecedented success, which would go on to bring international recognition to the Tyrolean Festival Erl. Top young talents, musicians from major international orchestras, chamber music specialists, and lecturers come together annually in summer and winter—and since 2017, also in fall and spring—as part of the Tyrolean Festival Erl. Under the direction of festival founder Gustav Kuhn, the orchestra garnered rave reviews from international critics and cemented its reputation as one of the world’s finest Wagner orchestras. With the start of Jonas Kaufmann’s tenure as artistic director in September 2024, Asher Fisch—a conductor in high demand internationally in both opera and concert settings—has taken over the helm of the orchestra.

In addition to Richard Wagner’s ten major music dramas and operas by Strauss, Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, and Rossini, the orchestra’s repertoire includes Beethoven’s symphonies and many other key works from the concert repertoire spanning the Baroque and Romantic periods, as well as contemporary works and world premieres.

Asher Fisch Musikalische Leitung

Asher Fisch is Chief Conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and has been Music Director of the Tiroler Festspiele in Erl since the beginning of the 2024/25 season. He is internationally recognized as one of the leading conductors and has an extensive repertoire that covers both opera and concert areas. He began his career as an assistant to Daniel Barenboim and as a conductor at the Berlin State Opera. Since then, he has conducted at major European opera houses, including Vienna, Milan, Munich, Paris and Madrid. As an acknowledged Wagner specialist, Fisch has recorded two complete "Ring" cycles as well as "Tristan und Isolde". In addition, he has intensively studied the Italian repertoire and recently released a Puccini album together with tenor Jonas Kaufmann, the new Artistic Director of the Tiroler Festspiele Erl.

As a concert conductor, Asher Fisch has led renowned US American and European orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France and the London Symphony Orchestra. Asher Fisch is also active as a pianist and can be experienced in piano concerts, with chamber music and as a song accompanist.

Ekaterina Gubanova Sieglinde

Ekaterina Gubanova, one of the most renowned mezzo-sopranos of the present day, studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. She regularly performs as a guest on the leading stages of the world, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Opéra national de Paris, the Vienna State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Teatro Real in Madrid and the Bayreuth Festival. Her broad repertoire with a focus on Wagner and Verdi also includes roles such as Santuzza (Cavalleria rusticana), Adalgisa (Norma) and Marguerite (La damnation de Faust). In the 2024/25 season, she can be seen as Fricka (Das Rheingold) in Munich, Foreign Princess (Rusalka) in Naples and Venus (Tannhäuser) at the Vienna State Opera, among others.

Jonas Kaufmann Siegmund

Since his debut at the Metropolitan Opera New York in 2006, Jonas Kaufmann has been one of the top stars of classical music. After engagements in Saarbrücken, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Milan, the tenor went to the Zurich Opera in 2001, from where his international career began with appearances at the Lyric Opera Chicago, the Paris Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Deutsche Oper and Staatsoper in Berlin, the Vienna State Opera, as well as at the festivals in Salzburg and Bayreuth. He is internationally in demand in Italian and French repertoire as well as in German. He has sung Verdi's Otello in London, Munich and Naples, Massenet's Werther in Paris, Vienna and New York, Wagner's Lohengrin in Bayreuth, at La Scala, in Paris and Melbourne. From oratorios and operettas to Canzone napoletana and Viennese songs, he masters the entire spectrum of tenor repertoire and places great emphasis on versatility. He describes song singing as the "royal class of singing," which he cultivates with great success worldwide in artistic partnership with pianist Helmut Deutsch, most recently on an Asia tour.

Since September 2024, Jonas Kaufmann has been Artistic Director of the Tiroler Festspiele Erl. For the 100th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini's death, he undertook a concert tour in Europe in 2024. Further highlights of the current season include Pagliacci at the Vienna State Opera, a song tour with Diana Damrau and Helmut Deutsch, as well as Pagliacci at the Bavarian State Opera.

Jonas Kaufmann's recordings have been awarded numerous international prizes. He has been voted "Singer of the Year" several times, including by the trade journal Opernwelt, the classical magazines Diapason and Musical America as well as the juries of the International Opera Awards and Opus Klassik (formerly Echo Klassik).

René Pape Hunding

René Pape is one of the outstanding vocal personalities of our time. Since 1988, as an ensemble member at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the bass has been singing the great roles of his field such as Méphistophélès (Faust), Filippo II (Don Carlo), Rocco (Fidelio), Gurnemanz (Parsifal), King Heinrich (Lohengrin) and King Marke (Tristan und Isolde). He has also appeared, among others, as Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), Prince Gremin (Eugen Onegin), Leporello and Don Giovanni (Don Giovanni) as well as Wotan (Das Rheingold, Die Walküre) on stage. Guest engagements have taken him, among others, to the Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals, the festivals in Glyndebourne, Verona, St. Petersburg and Aix-en-Provence, to the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. On the concert stage, he is in demand as a lieder interpreter and concert soloist. He is a two-time Grammy winner as well as a Berlin, Bavarian and Austrian Kammersänger.