Organization

Conductor

Christian Thielemann

Chorus master

Pablo Assante

Singer

Angela Denoke

Soloist

Ana Maria Labin

Piotr Beczała

Semperoper Dresden

Others

Saxon State Opera Choir Dresden

Orchestra

Staatskapelle Dresden

Gearmáinis

New Year's Eve concert 2011 - Lehár Gala

Dresden

Germany

With this gala concert from the Dresden Semperoper, Christian Thielemann impressively testifies to an early love, the operetta. "Kapellmeister" Christian Thielemann has had a fascination for this genre since the beginning of his conducting career. According to Thielemann, the operettas by Franz Lehár (1870-1948) in particular are first-class music and very difficult to perform due to their mixture of sophistication and cheerfulness. Together with the big international stars Angela Denoke and Piotr Beczala as well as the then newcomer Ana Maria Labin, Thielemann took up this challenge and was enthusiastically celebrated by an audience of millions; the concert was broadcast in 16 countries around the world.

This gala concert shows the whole complexity of the great master of the "Silver Operetta" with highlights from "Giuditta", "Paganini", "Friederike", "The Tsarevich", "The Land of Smiles" and many others. The concert will be rounded off by works by two of Lehár's contemporaries, Oscar Straus and Johann Strauss II. Members of the theater's ballet ensemble dance to Johann Strauss' waltz "Wilde Rosen" in the magnificent foyer of the Semperoper.

Lehár had a deep artistic connection to the Semperoper, which was one of the leading operetta theaters at the time, and wrote many of his famous arias for the tenor Richard Tauber, who sang in the Semperoper ensemble.

Grianghraif