The Israeli Opera: 2012 – 2013 Season Preview

The Israeli Opera is already looking ahead to the 2012 – 2013 season! General Director of the Israeli Opera Hanna Munitz revealed the coming season in a press meeting yesterday, Wednesday, March 13, 2012. There’s much to celebrate with Giuseppe Verdi’s 200th anniversary and Benjamin Britten’s centenary approaching in 2013, which the Israeli Opera will mark with productions of Verdi’s Luisa Miller, based on the play Kabale und Liebe by Friedrich von Schiller, directed by Immo Karaman, Otello, based on Shakespeare’s play; and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, based on the novella by Henry James.

One of the season’s highlights will be the performance of Puccini’s Turandot at Massada in June 2013, directed by Michał Znaniecki (read more here). Znaniecki directed a visually exhilarating and conceptually exciting Ernani (Verdi’s opera based on the play Hernani by Victor Hugo) at the opera in January 2011, a co-production between the Israeli Opera and the opera houses of Poznan and Bilbao. The large scale production is expected to include 200 terracotta statues onstage and will be conducted by Daniel Oren.

Woyzeck, based on the play by Georg Büchner, directed by Manfred Beilharz, and conducted by David Stern will be among the operas to be performed in the next season. Stern will also conduct The Passenger by Mieczysław Weinberg, telling the story of prisoners trying to escape from concentration camps. The libretto by Alexander Medvedev is based on the Polish radio play Passenger from Cabin Number 45 (1959) by Zofia Posmysz. The opera is sung in several languages, reflecting the native tongues of the prisoners:  Czech, Polish, French, Russian and Yiddish.

The Bolshoi Opera will arrive in Israel for the first time to perform Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, based on Pushkin’s novel in verse. The opera will be directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, and conducted by Alexander Verdnikov, and performed by the soloists, chorus and orchestra of the Bolshoi Opera.

The offerings at the Israeli Opera are extensive and diverse, with several music series – Liturgical, Symphonic, Jazz, Classic Rock and World Music, and an dance program. Innovative choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui  with TeZukA, Rock the Ballet – the Bad Boys of Dance, Boris Eifman Ballet with a new work based on the life of sculptor Rodin, Beijing Dance Theatre with Haze, and more – including our own Israel Ballet premiering And the Earth Shall Bear Again by choreographer Itzik Galili.