Salzburg Festival 2016: Thomas Adès and Peter Eötvös in Focus

The 2016 Salzburg Festival opened with the world premiere of Thomas Adès's third opera, The Exterminating Angel, conducted by the composer with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Directed by Tom Cairns, who also wrote the libretto, the opera is a co-production between London's Royal Opera House, New York's Metropolitan Opera, and the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. Based on Luis Buñuel's 1962 film, the story follows a group of upper-class diners who become mysteriously trapped in a villa after a night at the opera. The work features a large orchestra with unconventional instruments, including electronic music via ondes Martenot for the first time in Adès's oeuvre, and requires 15 major vocal roles performed by artists such as Anne Sofie von Otter, Charles Workman, John Tomlinson, Thomas Allen, and Audrey Luna. The festival also highlighted Peter Eötvös with his oratorio Halleluja, subtitled oratorium balbabum, directed by Daniel Harding with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Hungarian Radio Choir, and reciter Peter Simonischek. Based on a libretto by Péter Esterházi, it tells the story of the monk Notker Balbulus, who stuttered. Additionally, a concert on August 1 featured Eötvös conducting the Klangforum Wien in three of his earlier theatrical works: Shadows (1995-96), Sonata per 6 (2005, commemorating Béla Bartók's 125th birth anniversary), and Chinese Opera (1985-86).