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The Easter Festival’s new production can offer all of this and more. The cast is a blend of experienced Wagner singers and a number of promising debutants, most notably Lise Davidsen singing her first Brünnhilde. And the orchestra is the best in the world. It will be conducted by the brilliant Kirill Petrenko. And finally, the production examines the threats to our earth’s natural beauty.

When he wrote the »Ring«, Wagner set out to shed light on the conditions in his own time. He believed that the old world needed to end before a new and better world could be built on its ruins. Right at the beginning of the »Ring« nature is violated twice, first when Wotan tears a branch from the World Ash and uses it as a spear on which he carves the laws governing his new world order; and Alberich sets himself above the laws of nature by stealing the gold from the bed of the Rhine and using it as money. These events mark the start of a drama in which all of the world’s values vie with each other for supremacy in a raging life-and-death battle that lasts from the very beginning of time and continues into our own future.

The director Kirill Serebrennikov has extended the range of Wagner’s narrative and taken it beyond the confines of Europe. Whereas »Das Rheingold« is set in a barren, ice-covered part of Africa, »Die Walküre« takes us to America and includes references to the Mexican tradition of the Día de los Muertos, the »Day of the Dead«. For the world of nature, which in the »Ring« is symbolized by the World Ash and by the gold in the Rhine, Serebrennikov has found some new and excitingly impressive images.

The excellence of the Berliner Philharmoniker will not only be showcased in the field of music theatre but will also be complemented by a varied programme of concerts and other framing events. In the case of the 2027 Easter Festival, there will be one Orchestral Concert and two major choral works in addition to three performances of »Die Walküre«. The young Israeli conductor Lahav Shani has already appeared on a number of occasions with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In Salzburg, Shani, who has just taken over as principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, will be conducting Mussorgsky’s »Pictures at an Exhibition« and Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with Martha Argerich as the soloist, a living legend whose inexhaustible energy almost literally causes the piano to glow with white-hot passion.

The Choral Concerts feature two sacred works which in their very different ways explore the divine element in humankind. Emmanuelle Haïm will be conducting Handel’s »Messiah« in the original English with a team of soloists led by Sabine Devieilhe. The chorus will be Haïm’s own ensemble, Le Concert d’Astrée. Together with the Berlin Radio Chorus and four distinguished soloists – Golda Schultz, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Sebastian Kohlhepp and David Steffens – Kirill Petrenko will be conducting Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. Beethoven himself described this as his »greatest work«. For Kirill Petrenko the most fascinating aspect of the Missa solemnis lies in an entry in one of the composer’s conversation books in which the latter paraphrased the philosopher Immanuel Kant: »›The Moral Law in us, and the starry Heaven above us.‹ … Kant!!!« Even if beyond the recognizable world, forces may be at work that are incomprehensible to us humans, no religion and no philosophy can release us from the obligation to do what is right. Each of us remains responsible for his or her own actions. On this point Beethoven concurs with Wagner, whose own conviction in this matter is so graphically depicted in the »Ring«.
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Nikolaus Bachler
Intendant und Artistic Director of the Salzburg Easter Festival