HAMBURG ELBPHILHARMONIA: 23 MAY 2021



SCHUMANN GENOVEVA
HELSINKI BAROQUE ORCHESTRA
CONDUCTOR AAPO HÄKKINEN
Arnold Schoenberg Chor:
Knights, ecclesiastics, sguires, retainers, country people, apparitions

Carolyn Sampson, soprano (Genoveva)
Andrew Staples, tenor (Golo)
Johannes Weisser, baritone (Siegfried)
Vesselina Kasarova, soprano (Margaret)
Felix Speer, baritone (Hidulphus)
Cornelius Uhle, bass-baritone (Drago)
Marcell Krokovay, bass, (Balthasar)
Alexander Aigner, baritone (Caspar)

Visual concept: Kristiina Helin, collaboration with
IC-98 Visa Suonpää, Patrik Södrerlund
Costumes: Kristiina Helin

Schumann’s only opera is heard for the first time on 19th century period instruments. Visual dramatization by Kristiina Helin seeks to capture and enhance the spirit of Schumann’s vision of a truly epic opera actually impossible for traditional staging. Using sophisticated lights and video technology, in addition to carefully conducted slow-motion ‘moving portrait’ technique of the vocal forces, the performance creates an ineffable multi-arts experience hard to describe in traditional terminology. The mirror in which one beholds one’s own self, past and present, that is at the centre of Schumann’s unique concept, becomes an ageless moral force of terrifying transformative power.