Opera Tour Europe | Theatre-Opera-Ballet and Classical Music Small Group Tour for Seniors

After arriving in Hamburg, make your own way to the hotel. In the evening we come together for a welcome dinner and program orientation.

Today, we start with a city tour in the morning of Hamburg, its history and place in German musical culture. This evening we are attending a performance of My fair lady at the acclaimed Elbphilharmonie concert hall. High spirits in the Grand Hall. Fireworks outside the windows. And dancing in the foyer. New Year’s Eve at the Elbphilharmonie is a real hit! The NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra supplies the perfect background music, with masterpieces of light entertainment for the end of the year. This year the programme features a brilliant musical: Alan Gilbert conducts »My Fair Lady«.

A late start day touring around Hamburg with local guides. Visiting museums galleries and relevant historic locations. This afternoon we return to the Elbphilharmonie for Beethoven’s 9th. At the turn of the year, there is truly joy: there is hardly another work that is more suitable for a successful start to the New Year than Beethoven’s sparkling Ninth Symphony. It conveys in a psychological symphony journey “through night to the light” a valuable and deeply humanitarian message. A musical plea, together with the setting of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”, which evokes with exuberant pathos the ideal of a society of equals.

PERFORMERS

Symphony Orchestra Hamburg

Laeiszhallen Special Project Choir

Heather Engebretson soprano

Lioba Brown mezzo-soprano

Brenden Gunnell tenor

Audun Iversen bass

conductor Guillermo Garcia Calvo

The Symphoniker Hamburg under the direction of Guillermo Garcia Calvo get support from a prominent soloist ensemble and a choir, which comes together especially for this performance. Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor op. 125

Today is a free day at your leisure. There is a group meal this evening.

Tonight we attend in the LAEISZHALLE HAMBURG GROSSER SAAl performance by the acclaimed De-Phazz & STÜBAphilharmonie.

Lounge goes classic: you can expect something special when the De-Phazz jazz ensemble takes to the stage with a symphony orchestra. The band started out in tranquil Heidelberg two decades ago and has produced an unmistakable blend of soulful jazz, dancefloor and Latin rhythms. Now, for the first time ever, they join forces with STÜBAphilharmonie, which has repeatedly demonstrated its stylistic openness on critically acclaimed tours with singer-songwriters such as Clueso and Alin Coen. The symphonic De-Phazz project brings two stories of success together at the Laeiszhalle.

Today we take the short flight to Amsterdam. We have an afternoon orientating ourselves with a walking tour of the city. There is a group dinner this evening.

We spend the day exploring Amsterdam. Tonight we enjoy Hannes Minnar performing Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto No.3 at Amsterdam’s The Royal Concertgebouw

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The group leaves Amsterdam morning for the short journey to Paris where we take a guided tour including a gallery visit followed by a group meal.

PROGRAM

Mozart Cosi fan tutte , Opening “Il mio tesoro” from Cosi fan tutte “Fra gli amplessi” from Don Giovanni Verdi “Strano … Ah! Fors’è him … Semper libera … “extract from La Traviata Donizetti Roberto Devereux – Opening ” Una furtiva lagrima “,” Prendi per me sei libero “,” Caro elisir! Sei mio! … Esulti pure la barbara »excerpts from L’Elisir d’amore Gounod « I want to live »excerpt from Romeo and Juliette Massenet « Why wake me up, O breath of spring? »Extract from Werther Gounod” Go! I have forgiven you … Night of Hymenae … “extract of Romeo and Juliet Cilea L’Arlesiana – Prelude ” The solita storia del pastore “from The Arlesiana Leoncavallo I Pagliacci – Intermezzo Puccini ” Si, mi chiamano Mimi “, “Che gelida manina”, “O soave fanciulla” extracts from La Bohème It was a role for her, and this first Violetta exceeded all expectations, as the young soprano “lived” his role, both musically and theatrically. For the Italian tenor of Albanian origin, this was to be his 100 ^th Alfredo was intact but its freshness and its solar song had the bloom of youth role. It was obvious that these two had to meet for new duets of love. It is done with this program built from some of the most beautiful tunes and duets of Mozart, Verdi, Donizetti, Gounod, Massenet and Puccini.

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The group tours Paris learning about the impressionist movement with a guided tour and visit to the Musse D’ Orsee. Tonight the group attends a concert in the concert hall at the Phiharmonie de Paris. Conductor Herbert Blomstedt bestows his brilliance and vitality on the most accessible of Bruckner’s great symphonies. He is joined by Bertrand Chamayou in the pure mastery of Mozart’s Concerto No. 23.

Today local guides assist the group in exploring Paris fro the return visitor beyond the typical sights of the city.

Today we spend the afternoon at Versailles and then attend a performance in the evening of Mozarts The Magic flute in French with english subtitles. The Royal Opera is one of the greatest works by the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel. Inaugurated in 1770 during the reign of Louis XV, it was at the time the largest concert hall in Europe, and was also a great technical achievement and an impressive feat of decorative refinement. A theatre for monarchic and then republican life, it has hosted celebrations, shows and parliamentary debates. OPERA IN FRENCH VERSION In 1791, at the Theater auf der Wieden, in a suburb of Vienna, Mozart gave the first performance of his Singspiel Die Zauberflöte. Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto – he was also the director in his own theatre – aimed to reach a popular audience in their own language. Thanks to the theatrical and dreamlike qualities of the work and to Mozart’s magnificent music it was performed more than a hundred times in a year, and its success has never waned since. To charm audiences of all ages, music lovers and inexperienced public, Mozart and Schikaneder’s plus was addressing spectators in their own language – and not in Italian as in court operas. This is what this new production is proposing, in a version entirely in French, staged by Cécile Roussat and Julien Lubek (remember their beautiful Dido and Aeneas by Purcell) and conducted by Hervé Niquet, with a team of soloists fully invested in their roles of actor-singers, in French, to give more force to Mozart’s masterpiece. Production Opéra Royal de Wallonie / Liège. Corealisation Opéra Royal / Château de Versailles Spectacles, Opéra Grand Avignon, Le Concert Spirituel. Show in French with surtitles in French and English

PROGRAMME

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) The Magic Flute Opera in two acts on a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, created in 1791 in Vienna.

Today the is at leisure.

Today the is at leisure.

The day is free to explore at your leisure.

Today we visit with local guides relevant museums and art gallery exhibitions. Tonight we attend a concert by Sir Mark Elder who conducts Brahms’s radiant and bucolic 2nd symphony, in the second year of an acclaimed four-year symphony cycle. The cycle borrows from the spirit of early performances of the works by performing them with the musical forces that Brahms intended, to ‘exhilarating’ effect (The Times). The concert also traces a poetic line from Brahms’s symphonic Romanticism to more intimate evocations of poetry, love and nature in Mahler’s emotionally charged Songs for a Wayfarer, and Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes, the composer’s last completed orchestral work. Programme Britten Suite on English Folk Tunes Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen Brahms Symphony No 2 Performers Britten Sinfonia Sir Mark Elder conductor Anna Stéphany mezzo-soprano

Today we fly back to Hamburg for our final concert at the Elbphilhamonie great hall. When Christoph von Dohnányi returned to the rostrum of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra after a long time last season, the audience did not want to let him go again: Standing Ovations decided on an intensive interpretation of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony and paid tribute to the overwhelming artistic achievement of the former chief conductor. It is not too long to wait for the next comeback: a few months after his 90th birthday, Dohnányi’s maestro is back on stage at the Elbphilharmonie. Dohnányi played a major role in its construction and this will be one f the last concerts in this acclaimed concert venue.

The program concludes after breakfast.