Dresden Festival Orchestra
Vita
Founded in 2012, the Dresdner Festspielorchester — known for combining passionate musicianship with informed interpretation — is the period-instrument ensemble of the Dresden Music Festival. Its core repertoire centers on the Romantic era. The orchestra’s members are drawn from renowned early music ensembles such as the Academy of Ancient Music, the Orchestra of the 18th Century, the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Concentus Musicus Wien, Il Giardino Armonico, Concerto Köln, and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Ivor Bolton has been Principal Conductor since the orchestra’s inception, with guest conductors including Hans-Christoph Rademann, Constantinos Carydis, David Robertson, and Jean-Christophe Spinosi. One of its major milestones was the 2015 revival of Richard Strauss’s early opera Feuersnot, which premiered in Dresden and was nominated for the International Opera Award. The Dresdner Festspielorchester has collaborated with such soloists such as Giuliano Carmignola, Isabelle Faust, Simone Kermes, Bejun Mehta, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Valer Sabadus, and Thomas Zehetmair. In 2023, the orchestra joined forces with Concerto Köln under the baton of Kent Nagano to embark on an historically informed performance of Wagner’s complete Ring cycle that incorporates the most up-to-date findings from Wagner scholarship. Following Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, Siegfried is on the program this year, with tour stops in Prague, Paris, Cologne, Dresden, and Lucerne. The cycle will conclude in 2026 with Götterdämmerung.
One previous Lucerne Festival appearance: on 22 August 2023, when the Dresden Festival Orchestra made its debut here in Wagner’s Das Rheingold.
Mai 2025
Magazine
