Alexander Rodchenko (1891, St Petersburg – 1956, Moscow) was a driving force within the Russian Avantgarde and ranks among the great renovators of photography in the first half of the 20th Century. He was already well-known as a painter, sculptor and graphic designer when he challenged traditional notions of photography in 1924 by proclaiming that "Experimentation is our duty!". Dynamic compositions, extreme camera angles, stark contrasts and the use of photomontage are the constitutive features of his photographic language.

Rodchenko’s visual compositions as well as his constructivist manifests have been seminal for the development of modern photography. With over 200 of Rodchenko’s photographs on display, among them renowned icons like Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (1924), Steps (1929) or Girl with a Leica (1934), the exhibition explores a broad range of his dynamic vision. The photographs in the show, lots of them are rare vintage prints, will be complemented by a selection of posters and publications from Rodchenko’s typographic work.

Curated by Olga Sviblova, Director of the Moscow House of Photography Museum.

The Alte Galerie is showing a selection of works of Austrian and South German Baroque artists in its special exhibition, Line, Light and Shadow. Master Drawings of the Baroque. Besides its main focus on painted oil sketches, the Rossacher Collection includes a bundle of works drawn on paper. The Kupferstichkabinett of the Alte Galerie houses more than 400 freehand drawings. This exhibition comprises carefully selected works from both
collections.

With a few exceptions, the Baroque hand drawing should not be seen an artwork in its own right. It was primarily a form of preparation and design for another artistic medium. Accordingly, the exhibition is divided by areas of design – for altars, for ceiling and wall paintings, as well as for altar pieces and copper engravings. The works are often striking as individual works in their vivid, spontaneous and modern-seeming strokes. Geographically, the exhibition is concentrated on the South German and Austrian regions, presenting works by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Daniel Seiter, Hans Adam Weissenkircher, Martino Altomonte, Johann Lukas Hildebrandt, Johann Georg Bergmüller, Paul Troger, Caspar Franz Sambach, Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Kremser Schmidt as well as by Styrian painters.

Wilhelm Thöny (1888–1949) was born in Graz, and not only spent a part of his life in the city, cultivating personal contacts here, but set in motion key cultural-political initiatives (founding the Grazer Secession in 1923).

Today Thöny is considered one of the most important Austrian artists of the first half of the 20th century, who can be ranked alongside such famous painters as Oskar Kokoschka, Herbert Boeckl or the artists of the Nötscher Kreis like Anton Kolig, Franz Wiegele and Anton Faistauer.

The Neue Galerie Graz owns some twenty paintings as well as around eighty graphic works of Thöny’s, which largely derive from the estate of Thöny’s widow, Thea Thöny, and which came to the Neue Galerie Collection in 1966 in the form of a foundation. In addition, the Steiermärkische Sparkasse has made over its Thöny Collection to the Neue Galerie as a permanent loan.

With this comprehensive exhibition and the catalogue raisonné that accompanies it, a long-held wish on the part of the Neue Galerie Graz and the public is finally realised, enabling an Austrian pioneer of Modernism once again to be brought closer to a wider audience. 

Arnold Schoenberg: Gurre-Lieder für Soli, Chor und Orchester (1900-1901/1910-1911

Kent Nagano, conductor

Wiener Symphoniker
Wiener Singakademie
Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana
Orfeó Catalŕ
Chor des Slowakischen Nationaltheaters, Waldemars Mannen

Angela Denoke: Tove
Mihoko Fujimura: Waldtaube
Jay Hunter Morris: Waldemar
Kurt Azesberger: Klaus Narr
Albert Dohmen: Bauer
Sunnyi Melles: Sprecherin

Music to the Roman de la Rose by Guillaume Dufay, Solage, Guillaume de Machaut, Johannes Ciconia, Gilles Binchois, Johannes Le Grant und Adam

“When I the age of 20 had attained/The age when Love controls a young man’s heart/As I was wont, one night I went to bed/And soundly slept. But there came a dream/Which much delighted me, it was so sweet...” With these words the young hero in the “Roman de la Rose” sets out on an adventurous journey. This novel is considered a masterpiece of French Literature and of 13th century allegory. The Ensemble Santenay accompanies the young hero on his voyage into the gardens of Paradise where he learns the art of loving and living. At the end of his journey, he is ready to pick his loved “Rose” whose picture he once saw in a well ...

Santenay (ensemble):
Julla von Landsberg, soprano & organetto
Elodie Wiemer, recorder
Szilárd Chereji, fiddle
Orí Harmelin, lute

The multi-national ensemble draws its name from the castle of Santenay, in Burgundy, a castle which constitutes for the musicians in a way a symbol of the apogee of the culture at the Burgundian court.

Jacques Offenbach: Barbe-Bleue (Bluebeard)
Opéra-bouffe in three acts and four scenes
(semi-staged production, French with German dialogs)

Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor
Philipp Harnoncourt, stage director & lighting
Elisabeth Ahsef, costumes

In 1866, when the citizens of Prague were enjoying the first performance of the “Bartered Bride”, the Parisians were celebrating an entirely different spectacle: Jacques Offenbach and his two authors Meilhac and Halévy had turned the tale of Knight Bluebeard into a merciless satire on the frivolous morals of the Second French Empire. Knight Bluebeard is a promiscuous womanizer who repeatedly tires very soon of his recent wives and makes it a habit to have someone dispose of them one after the other. King Bobęche also makes short work of any man who dares to get too close to his Queen. The assumed murder victims are of course as fresh as a daisy and participate in a grotesque mass wedding at the end of the play. And Bluebeard is on his way towards a stormy marriage: the farmwoman Boulette puts the fear of God into him with her slogans of female emancipation.

In his music, Offenbach deftly juggles the complex mix of pastoral piece and “Grand Opéra“, of sweet, grotesque and erotic scenes.


Cast

Elisabeth Kulman, mezzo-soprano (Boulotte)
Johannes Chum, tenor (Le Sire de Barbe-Bleue)
Sophie Marin-Degor, soprano (Fleurette)
Cornel Frey, tenor (Le roi Bobęche)
Sébastien Soulčs, bass (Popolani)
Thomas E. Bauer, bass (Le comte Oscar)
Markus Schäfer, tenor (Le prince Saphir)
Elisabeth von Magnus, mezzosoprano (La reine Clémentine)

Arnold Schoenberg Chor
Chamber Orchestra of Europe

Georges Bizet: Carmen
Opera in four acts (1875)
Poem by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy
Based on the short story by Prosper Mérimée

Bertrand de Billy, conductor
Franco Zeffirelli, stage direction
Franco Zeffirelli: sets
Leo Bei: costumes
 
Elina Garanca: Carmen
Roberto Alagna: Don José
Ludovic Tézier: Escamillo, Toreador
Anita Hartig: Micaela