The music summer begins

The festival summer begins

Singers and musicians travel from all over the world. The costumes are still being completed, the stage set is being provided with final details, the vocal coloraturas are being refined en detail. The preparation phase for the Immling Festival 2023 BETWEEN.WORLDS is in full swing before the start of the festival and at the same time is moving towards a rehearsal-filled and enjoyable end.

We can’t wait to clear the stage on June 10 at 6 p.m. and open for the exquisite selection of musical moments.

There is “Salome,” a musical drama by Richard Strauss that is as dazzling as it is contradictory. It is about vengefulness of the most bloodthirsty kind, but also about the longing for love that has been buried deep in the truest sense of the word. “Salome” is brutal, at the same time laced with literary acumen and wordplay, all set to overwhelmingly moving music.

With “María de Buenos Aires” by composer Astor Piazzolla, a musical mood painting in 17 images awaits us, leading intimately and quietly from light into darkness. The tango operita takes you to Buenos Aires in dark, nebulous realms, which casts a glance at the darker side of being human. María moves through the Argentine metropolis, guided by the sounds of tango music. She chats, prances, recalls carefree childhood days. Finally, their journey ends underground: among “whore mothers and thieves,” where identity and memory are extinguished.

“Nabucco” – the great opera by Giuseppe Verdi, which is about religion-initiated war, power and abuse of power. And the small narrative, the invisible that is reflected less in the plot than in the music: The family conflict between three people – between the father Nabucco and the two daughters Abigaille and Fenena. With Nabucco, Verdi achieved his breakthrough as an opera composer. Va, pensiero – Fly, thought!

Things get romantic with Lehár’s operetta “The Land of Smiles”. The love story of Lisa and Prince Sou-Chong begins in waltzing Vienna and leads to distant, exotic China. However, the cultural differences put their tender love to the test. Popular melodies such as “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz” or “Meine Liebe, deine Liebe” have made the operetta world famous.

The crowning glory of our 2023 program and the completion of our musical soul-searching will be Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony: a mammoth work presented by a hundred-musician orchestra and powerful-voiced choir.

Our Immling Academy deserves special attention in 2023. With Gioachino Rossini’s opera “Cinderella,” we set out and walk through fairy-tale worlds – an invitation for young and old to share exciting fantasy journeys.

True to the motto young and wild and wonderful, the musical choir of the Immling Academy presents the musical “Sister Act” with a powerful and lively voice. It’s off to the convent: But anyone who thinks they’ll find silence there is mistaken when nuns reveal themselves as glamour queens and their love of gospel and soul ignites.

For concert lovers, there are three special cultural events: Soprano Felicitas Fuchs-Wittekindt leads the audience through a romantic song recital in the Blumengarten. At the studio concert in the artist studio of Antje Tesche-Mentzen, the virtuoso pianist Ana Gourari invites you to a soulful matinée. And at the Finale Grande, the artists of the festival say goodbye in a way that is as musical as it is personal.

The program of this year’s Immling Festival is outstanding, idiosyncratic and so versatile that it has something in store for every classical music and music lover.

“Of course, the last few weeks have been incredibly intense for all the artists, for our team, for my wife, musical director Cornelia von Kerssenbrock, and for me, as artistic director of the Festival. We are all the more pleased to be able to enjoy the completion of our work, into which we have put so much thought, so much dedication and so much heart and soul for months now,” says Ludwig Baumann.