Barihunk Festival at Salzburg Festival

Add Günther Groissböck and Alessio Arduini

The 2014 Salzburg Festival will run from July 18-August and will feature barihunks in almost all of their productions, including many of the biggest names in opera.

The Festival will be paying tribute to Richard Strauss' 150th  birthday by performing Der Rosenkavalier. The opera will feature barihunk Günther Groissböck as Baron Ochs in his role debut (which he will reprise at the Met). The cast also includes Krassimira Stoyanova as the Marschallin and Sophie Koch as Octavian.

The Festival will continue their Mozart/da Ponte cycle introduced in 2013 with a new production of Don Giovanni directed by Sven-Eric Bechtolf. The cast includes a trio of barihunks led by Ildebrando d'Arcangelo in the title role, Luca Pisaroni as his sidekick Leporello and the dashing Italian baritone Alessio Arduini as Masetto.

René Pape will be featured in a concert performance of music from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde featuring the prelude, Act 2 and Isolde’s transfiguration featuring Waltraud Meier.

Austrian barihunk Markus Werba will sing Roland opposite the Florinda of Dorothea Röschmann in Schubert's rarely performed Fierabras. The libretto combines two episodes from the cycle of legends associated with the Frankish leader Charlemagne and is set against the background of the skirmishes between Christians and Muslims.

Jean-Sébastien Bou and Markus Werba

Baroque specialist Jean-Sébastien Bou will star in the premiere of librettist Barbara Honigmann and composer Marc-André Dalbavie's Charlotte Salomon, which is dedicated to Gerard Mortier. Directed by Luc Bondy, Charlotte Salomon is based on the work of a Jewish artist who died at age 26 in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Saloman fled to southern France following the Kristallnacht pogrom in Berlin where she joined her grandparents. Her grandmother threw herself to her death from an upstairs window, which was the same way that her mother had died when the girl was nine.

Other productions include Anna Netrebko as Leonora in Verdi's Il Trovatore, which includes Plácido Domingo in the baritone role of the Count di Luna, Rossini's La Cenerentola with Cecilia Bartoli and a children's performance of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail featuring Salzburg young artists.

All in all, the Festival will feature over 250 performances including opera, theater and concerts. Tickets and additional performance information is available online.