The Zurich Opera House celebrates the fascinating diversity of Baroque music with a new annual festival. A rich programme of operas, concerts, chamber music, family concerts and performances invites connoisseurs and newcomers alike to immerse themselves in the world of early music for ten days.
At the heart of the festival’s first edition is the premiere of the rarely performed tragedy “Scylla et Glaucus” by the French composer Jean-Marie Leclair. Cecilia Bartoli appears as Cleopatra in George Frideric Handel’s “Giulio Cesare”. Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky makes his Zurich Opera House debut as a conductor with Handel’s “Aci, Galatea e Polifemo”.
Further concert highlights include the two great Passions by Johann Sebastian Bach: the “St John Passion” with Orchestra La Scintilla and the Zurich Sing-Akademie, and the “St Matthew Passion” with the acclaimed ensemble Pygmalion under the direction of Raphaël Pichon. Together with Concerto Köln, soprano Jeanine De Bique presents a programme featuring works by Handel and his contemporaries.
At the Kunsthaus, students from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) explore Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”: fourteen new performances open up an artistic field of tension between past and present. Additional concerts with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra as well as musicians from the ensemble Le Concert d’Astrée are devoted to compositions by Jean-Marie Leclair. Last but not least, two children’s concerts make the music of Handel and Leclair accessible in a playful way.
