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(Samuel Kubani/AFP)
It is also a farewell gift of sorts from the house's general manager, Ioan Holender, who steps down at the end of this season after 19 years at the helm.
With a running time of about two hours and a cast of just six singers, the score of "Medea" grips from the opening solo gong to the lonely soaring piccolo line at the end, with orchestral writing of an almost visceral impact.
Before turning to opera, Reimann started his career accompanying singers on the piano and was professor for contemporary writing of lieds -- or sung Germanic poems -- in Berlin for many years.
His vocal writing is fiendishly difficult, and German soprano Marlis Petersen received the most applause of the evening for the accomplishment and ease with which she sang the title role.
The other five singers included Vienna State Opera regulars such as Austrian mezzo Elisabeth Kulman as Medea's slave Gora, Viennese baritone Adrian Eroed as Jason, and Croatian countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic, making his house debut in the short role of Herold.
The staging was by Swiss director, set and lighting designer Marco Arturo Marelli and transfers the action of the Greek legend to a futuristic desert of rock and stone.
In the pit was Germany's Michael Boder, who has conducted a number of Reimann's works and operas in the past.
"Medea" is a co-production with the Frankfurt Opera and is being performed four more times in March.
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With a running time of about two hours and a cast of just six singers, the score of "Medea" grips from the opening solo gong to the lonely soaring piccolo line at the end, with orchestral writing of an almost visceral impact.
Before turning to opera, Reimann started his career accompanying singers on the piano and was professor for contemporary writing of lieds -- or sung Germanic poems -- in Berlin for many years.
His vocal writing is fiendishly difficult, and German soprano Marlis Petersen received the most applause of the evening for the accomplishment and ease with which she sang the title role.
The other five singers included Vienna State Opera regulars such as Austrian mezzo Elisabeth Kulman as Medea's slave Gora, Viennese baritone Adrian Eroed as Jason, and Croatian countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic, making his house debut in the short role of Herold.
The staging was by Swiss director, set and lighting designer Marco Arturo Marelli and transfers the action of the Greek legend to a futuristic desert of rock and stone.
In the pit was Germany's Michael Boder, who has conducted a number of Reimann's works and operas in the past.
"Medea" is a co-production with the Frankfurt Opera and is being performed four more times in March.
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