From 3 November to 1 December, Jonathan Stockhammer will conduct Alfred Schnittke's opera Life with an Idiot at Zurich Opera House in a new production directed by Kirill Serebrennikov.

Jonathan Stockhammer conducts the Philharmonia Zurich and the Zurich Opera Chorus in eight performances of Leben mit einem Idioten (Life with an Idiot), which premiered in Amsterdam in 1992 and was composed by Alfred Schnittke to a libretto by Viktor Yerofeyev. Kirill Serebrennikov stages the opera as the dystopian story of a married couple whose most destructive instincts are triggered by the presence of the ‘idiot’. Schnittke's polystylistic music contains numerous references to music from a wide range of eras, including the International, Russian folk music, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich and Bach's St Matthew Passion.

Opernhaus Zürich

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© Irmeli Jung

In 2019, Wergo released a portrait CD including Anssi Karttunen’s recordings of Hans Werner Henze’s English Love Songs with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Oliver Knussen.

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