The Bavarian State Opera of Munich will present seven new productions in 2003–04, the company announced on Thursday.
The new productions are Berlioz's edition of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice, starring Vesselina Kasarova; Donizetti's Roberto Devereux, directed by Christoph Loy with Edita Gruberova as Queen Elizabeth; Berg's Lulu, starring Margarita De Arellano and directed by David Alden (who this season completed the Munich Ring cycle left unfinished by the late Herbert Wernicke); Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, with conductor Marcello Viotti, director Andreas Homoki and a cast including Angela-Maria Blasi, Marcelo Alvarez and Anna Bonitatibus; Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, conducted by State Opera music director Zubin Mehta and featuring Jan-Hendrik Rootering, Kurt Moll and Eike Wilm Schulte; Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, with Sarah Connolly, Ian Bostridge, Susan Bullock Christopher Maltman and Alan Held directed by Deborah Warner; and Debussy's Pélleas et Mélisande, in a co-production with English National Opera directed by Richard Jones and starring Joan Rodgers, Clive Bayley, Garry Magee and Robert Hayward.
In January and February, Mehta will lead two complete performances of the Ring cycle.
The company reported that opera attendance for the 2002 financial year was at 94 percent of capacity. Ticket sales for the state opera and ballet rose above the level reached in 2000, the last year before the economic downturn, and total attendance reached an all-time high.
— Ben Mattison
