Various - Verdi: Un ballo in maschera

Munich�s new Ballo in maschera has received much critical acclaim: �This production shows what a utopia opera can be� (Abendzeitung). Ten years after stepping down as music director of the Bavarian State Opera, Zubin Mehta returned to Munich in March 2016 to celebrate his 80th birthday conducting Verdi�s masterpiece for the first time in a staged production. His cast features some of today�s finest Verdi singers: soprano Anja Harteros, singing Amelia for the first time and �filling every note with Verdian intensity�, tenor Piotr Beczala as a �visually and vocally dashing Riccardo� and George Petean as an �exemplary� Renato (Neue Musikzeitung). In director Johannes Erath�s super-sensitive new production, this historically-based tale of illicit love, conspiracy and betrayal unfolds in a surrealistic, shadowy setting transformed by lighting and projections. Special praise was showered by the enthusiastic critics on Maestro Mehta, whom �creates concentrated musical connections, miraculously guiding his orchestra and unsurpassable voices the way a thermal lifts a paraglider... Musically the performance was a dream� (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).