This year’s Zürich Festival, held from June 14 to July 14, 2013 under the motto of «Wagner Hothouse», focuses on the period Richard Wagner spent in Zürich, and features musical theater, opera, plays, concerts, exhibitions, discussions, a symposium and much more besides.
Kicking off the Wagner Year 2013 is the artistic focal point, the world premiere of «Richard Wagner – Wie ich Welt wurde» by Hans Neuenfels, the first coproduction between the Zürich Opera House and the Schauspielhaus Zürich.
The Festival motto, «Wagner Hothouse», alludes to a poem by Wagner’s muse, Mathilde Wesendonck, which the composer set to music. However, it also symbolizes Zürich, which granted him political exile between 1849 and 1858 and provided him with an ideal breeding ground for his ground-breaking ideas.
Thus protected and nurtured, in Zürich Wagner’s creativity blossomed in a manner one could never have imagined. Consequently, the Zürich Festival 2013 is celebrating the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth with a program that centers on the «workshop» character of his Zürich years.
The world premiere of «Richard Wagner – Wie ich Welt wurde» is an evening of musical theater examining the life, way of thinking and compositions of Richard Wagner during the period he spent in Zürich and beyond.
The author and stage director of this first coproduction between the Zürich Opera House and the Schauspielhaus municipal theater is Hans Neuenfels, one of the most important theater and opera producers of the present day.
On the opening weekend, Nike Wagner will deliver an address at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. In the musical theater, «Das Rheingold» – also performed at the Schauspielhaus – stage director David Marton examines Wagner the Myth and the power of his music. Instead of a full-size orchestra, the music is interpreted by a jazz singer, a lyric tenor, a pianist and a cellist. In addition, with the Festival premiere of «La straniera» by Vincenzo Bellini, whom Wagner held in great esteem, the Zürich Opera House looks at the theme of the fascination of strangers.
A comprehensive overview of the performances of Wagner’s works in Zürich over the last one and a half centuries is provided by the exhibition, «Valkyries over Zürich. 150 years of Wagner’s performances in Zürich», at the Kunsthaus Zürich, featuring theatre photographs, set designs and other exhibits. Zürich’s concert hall orchestra, theTonhalle-Orchester Zürich, will be playing «incidentals» from Wagner’s musical hothouse, which unjustly stands in the shadow of the great musical theater works – such as his songs for the piano in a tonally sensual orchestration by Hans Werner Henze. In an event as part of the series, «Wahlverwandtschaften – Literatur und Musik», Adolf Muschg and Daphne Wagner, together with musicians from the Tonhalle Orchestra, present his elective affinities in literature. The reconstruction of a historic concert put on by Wagner in honor of his patron, Otto Wesendonck, on the original site, Villa Wesendonck, ties in with the composer’s success as a conductor in Zürich.
Details of further highlights during the Wagner Year can be found at:www.festspiele-zuerich.ch.
