12 August - 18 September 2010
Music in Lucerne - a Love Story
The theme of the 2010 Summer Festival is 'Eros' – and love has inspired the programmes. The main focus of the concerts will fall on famous lovers from music history. Claudio Abbado and the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA will open with that immortal paean to marital fidelity, Beethoven's Fidelio. Then Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in a staging by Peter Sellars with videos by Bill Viola. The moving tragedy of Romeo and Juliet will resound in the setting by Sergey Prokofiev, and Pelléas and Mélisande will greet us in works by Fauré and Sibelius. Don Juan is an absolute must, of course, as is his Finnish counterpart, Lemminkäinen. Even incestuous love is represented by Byron's Manfred as set to music by Schumann and Tchaikovsky. We will also hear pieces with secret love messages: musical declarations of love from Robert to Clara Schumann, from Gustav to Alma Mahler, and from Alban Berg to Hanna Fuchs.
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The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTA and Claudio Abbado during LUCERNE FESTIVAL in Summer 2009 (Priska Ketterer)