Concert master/orchestra:

Ulla Baur

ullabaur@hotmail.de

Conductor: Arno Jochem de La Rosée

a.r.jochem.de.la.rosee@web.de

Organisation: Adrian Dunskus

adrian.dunskus@dunskus.de

Joseph Schuster, forgotten genius died 200 years ago in 2012

“I send my sister herewith six duets for clavicembalo [harpsichord]and violin by Schuster,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote in 1777, adding: “If I stay on, I shall write six myself in the same style, as they are very popular here”. The music written by these two great composers was in parts so much alike that some of Joseph Schuster’s string quartets were for a long time considered to be Mozart’s “Milan quartets”. The error only came to light in 1966. In his day, Schuster was highly regarded in his capacity as “Royal Saxon Kapellmeister” in Dresden, Germany. Up to the middle of the 18th century, Dresden ranked among the wealthiest and politically most influential cities in Europe and fostered the arts at court accordingly. After losing the Seven Years’ War in 1763, Saxony suffered financial hardships, but Dresden remained a leader in the field of music. During his lifetime, Schuster was a celebrity, feted throughout Europe as one of the best opera composers of the time. His work is complex, fresh and rich. After his death in 1812, however, Schuster’s work faded into obscurity and was only rediscovered by the German violinist Ulla Baur a few years ago. With her orchestra “La Ciaccona”, she has made a highly acclaimed recording of Schuster’s opera Demofoonte for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, and her staged performances of Amor e Psiche at the festivals of Early Music in Dresden and Regensburg were also a great success. The music world is now about to rediscover Schuster’s opera Il marito indolente, coinciding with the bicentenary of the composer’s death in 2012.

The characters:

METILDA Dorothee Mields

TRANQUILLO, her husband Günter Papendell

LUCINA, Tranquillo’s sister Marie Friederike Schöder

FULGENZIO, Tranquillo’s uncle Markus Flaig

REGINELLA, the servant Constanze Backes

GRAF BELSOSPIRO, suitor of Metilda’s Andreas Post

IL TENENTE, suitor of Metilda’s Jörg Waschinski

LA CIACCONA concert master: Ulla Baur

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Dominik Wilgenbus

HARPSICHORD and RÉPÉTITEUR Robert Schröter

CONDUCTOR Arno Jochem de La Rosée

(subject to alterations)

Dorothee Mields

Dorothee Mields studied singing in Bremen and Stuttgart. A major focus of her work is 17th and 18th century music, as are contemporary compositions. Her repertoire includes works by Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart, through to ones by Boulez, Grisey and Beat Furrer. In 2008, she performed Grisey’s Quatre chants at the Salzburg Festival with the Klangforum Wien and Emilio Pomárico. She has recorded more than 40 works, some of them winning awards and is a regular guest at the Bach Festival in Leipzig, the Suntory Music Foundation Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Festival van Vlaanderen, the Wiener Festwochen, the Handel Festival in Halle and Göttingen, as well as the Tanglewood Festival. She regularly works with the Collegium Vocale Gent, the Bach Collegium Japan, the Nederlandse Bachvereniging, the Flanders Recorder Quartett, the Klangforum Wien, the Sirius Viols, L’Orfeo baroque orchestra and with conductors such as Ivor Bolton, Beat Furrer, Philippe Herreweghe, Gustav Leonhardt, Kenneth Montgomery, Hans Christoph Rademann, Stephen Stubbs, Masaaki Suzuki and Jos van Veldhoven.

Günter Papendell

Born in Krefeld (Germany), the baritone Günter Papendell concluded his training at Munich’s Academy of Music in 2005 as a master class student of Daphne Evangelatos. He was a finalist and an award winner at the annual ARD (German Public Radio) Music Contest, the Willi Domgraff Fassbaender Competition and the Belvedere Singing Contest. As a concert singer, he has performed at festivals such as the “Schwäbischer Frühling” in Germany, the Mondsee Festival in Austria, the Sagra Musicale Umbra in Italy and Chicago’s Ravinia Festival. He has worked with Helmut Deutsch and Marcello Viotti, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He was nominated “Young singer of the year” in 2002 for his renditions of Mozart. In 2004 he became a member of the ensemble of the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen, where he not only appeared in the roles for lyrical baritone, but also embodied parts such as Don Giovanni, Escamillo and Zurga in Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles. He has been a guest artist at the Bayerische Staatsoper and the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich as well as at the Staatstheater in Mannheim, Mainz and Weimar, in Dortmund, Bonn and at the Komische Oper in Berlin. He has been a member of the latter’s ensemble since 2007 and has sung Marcel, Count Almavia, Guglielmo, Dr. Falke and Malatesta. Tobias Meisberger has been Papendell’s private singing teacher for 17 years.

Marie Fried. Schöder

Marie Friederike Schöder first appeared on stage at the age of four. She went on to study with Juliane Claus at the Music Institute at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). Since 2006, she has been a private voice student of Krisztina Laki. From the age of ten, she was trained as a dancer and was European vice-champion in solo show dancing in 2000. She received first prize in the opera category at the regional contest in North-Rhine-Westphalia as qualification for the Federal Contest. She has attended master courses held by Julie Kaufmann, Ruth Ziesak, Barbara Schlick and Peter Schreier. Her first engagement was at the Nordharzer-Städtebund-Theater in Halberstad, appearing as Ännchen in Freischütz, Anna Reich in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Valencienne in The Merry Widow, Christel in Der Vogelhändler and Marie in Zar und Zimmermann to name but a few roles. At the same time, she has continued to work in Early Music, appearing, for instance, as Angelica in George Fredric Handel’s Orlando. Marie Friederike Schöder won first prize at the International Bach Competition in Leipzig in 2008.

Markus Flaig

Markus Flaig first studied school music and church music at the Academy of Music in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany). He then took voice lessons from Beata Heuer-Christen and was a member of the opera class of Gerd Heinz. This was followed by advanced courses with Berthold Possemeyer in Frankfurt am Main, which he completed with distinction. Since autumn 2006 he has worked with Carol Meyer-Bruetting in Frankfurt. Flaig was subsequently signed as a guest artist by the Städtische Bühnen in Freiburg for the part of Azarias in Benjamin Britten’s The burning fiery furnace, for the first performance of Cornelius Schwehr’s opera Heimat in memory of the Baden Revolution 1848/49, for Salome by Richard Strauss and for the part of Noah in Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s fludde. He has performed madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi and Carlo Gesualdo at the Schwetzingen Festival in Germany, in Henry Purcell’s Fairy Queen at the Festival Week Herrenhausen in Hanover and at the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth as Alcée and Tirtée in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Fêtes d’Hébé. Flaig has recorded numerous CDs with renowned conductors. Concert tours have taken him halfway around the globe. He has also been a prize winner at the International Bach Competition in Leipzig.

Constanze Backes

Constanze Backes studied singing at the Folkwang Music Academy in Essen (Germany) and as a private student of Karin Mitzscherling in Dresden and Jessica Cash in London. In 1996 she was awarded the prestigious Lady Nixon award for promising young singers. She has been a member of the Monteverdi Choir, under whose conductor John Eliot Gardiner she performed in international opera productions at the Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris, Teatro Reggio in Parma, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Ludwigsburg Festival in Germany, appearing as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro, Valletto in L’incoronazione di Poppea and Papagena in The Magic Flute. She has been a guest artist at Berlin’s Hebbel-Theater, the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth, the Ruhr-Triennale (Purcell’s King Arthur), the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden and the Schwetzingen Festival in Germany and the Festival in Feldkirch, Austria. As a member of the Musica Fiata, the Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam and the Alte Musik Dresden ensemble, she has participated in numerous CD productions. She has made further recordings with conductors such as Paul McCreesh, Robert King, René Jacobs, Simon Standage, Ludger Remy, Thomas Hengelbrock and Eduardo Lopez Banzo.

Andreas Post

Andreas Post received his first singing lessons from Alastair Thompson. He went on to study with K. Soto Papulkasr at the Folkwang Music Academy in Essen, taking up school music before switching to musical theatre and voice. He earned his artistic degree and subsequently passed his concert exam with distinction. Following this he worked with Norman Shetler on a scholarship from the Schubert Gesellschaft in Duisburg, followed by a scholarship from the Richard-Wagner-Verband in Cologne. His busy concert career has taken him all across Europe and led him to work with renowned conductors and famous orchestras. He is much in demand as a guest artist at international festivals such as the Telemann Festival in Magdeburg, the Dresden Music Festival, the Early Music Festival in Regensburg, the Handel Festival in Halle, the Festival van Vlanderen in Bruges or recently as Tamino in Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the festival in Gut Immling near Munich. In 1998, he received second prize at the 11th International Bach Competition in Leipzig and a special award from the MDR (a unit of German Public Radio).

Jörg Waschinski

Berlin-born Jörg Waschinski represents the third generation of counter singers. He was the first male soprano to study with Renate Faltin at the Academy of Music “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin. Today, Waschinski is a popular guest artist at all of the major opera houses and has quickly emerged as a favourite both with the public and with the critics. He has worked with renowned conductors such as Ton Koopman, Frieder Bernius, Reinhard Goebel, Michael Hofstetter, Jos van Veldhoven, John Fiore and Christoph Spering, as well as respected artistic directors including Philipp Himmelmann, Dietrich Hilsdorf, Georges Delnon, Franziska Severin, and Frank-Patrick Steckel. In early 2009, a co-production between Phoenix Edition and Deutschlandradio Kultur resulted in publication of a solo CD with Waschinski’s interpretation of lieder by Clara Schumann in a version for string quartet, and Farao brought out a CD with hitherto unpublished Handel cantatas. Autumn 2009 saw publication of a further solo CD, featuring songs by the American composer Amy Beach performed with the Meininger Trio and distributed by Phoenix Edition, again in co-production with Deutschlandradio Kultur.

Dominik Wilgenbus

Dominic Wilgenbus studied music theatre and artistic direction under August Everding in Munich. He plays the piano, the oboe and the cello, has had singing lessons and was trained as a conductor and composer. Today, he works as a freelance director, translator and writer as well as a lecturer at the Music College Nuremburg-Augsburg. He is a co-founder of the Metropoltheater and the Kammeroper in Munich. His work has taken him to many places, including Meiningen (The Comedian Harmonists, The Black Rider), Dortmund (e.g. Hänsel und Gretel; La Bohème), Klagenfurt (Wiener Blut, Don Pasquale, Into the Woods), Leipzig (e.g. Die schöne Helena, Zar und Zimmermann at the Musikalische Komödie), the Volksoper in Vienna (Die Herzogin von Chicago, DVD distributed by Capriccio), the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich (La gazza ladra) and Chemnitz (Rusalka at the opera house). His work Heidi – das Heimatmusical has been part of the repertoire in Leipzig for more than six consecutive years. He has performed his literary-musical solo programme “Mein Wagner” since 1997.

Ulla Baur

Ulla Baur studied the violin under Irmgard Gahl at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, then the baroque violin at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague under Sigiswald Kuijken, concluding her studies with a diploma. Following this, she was a member of numerous baroque orchestras. In subsequent years her busy career as a soloist and concert master took her all across Europe. She has participated in a large number of CD, radio and TV recordings both in Germany and abroad. Since 2000, she has taken a special interest in the orchestra “La Ciaccona” which she founded. Through her scholarly work, Ulla Baur came upon the forgotten opera Demofoonte by Joseph Schuster, for which she was able to secure the partnership of Bayerischer Rundfunk (a unit of German Public Radio) and Deutschlandradio. The production was published by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (BMG). It was followed by the staged performance of Amor e Psiche by Joseph Schuster at the Festival in Dresden and the Early Music Festival in Regensburg. Ulla Baur has since rediscovered additional operas and oratorios by Schuster as well as all of his harpsichord concerts, editing them in modern scores.

Robert Schröter

Robert Schröter (Munich) is at home on historic keyboards (especially harpsichords and organs) and can occasionally be heard playing the piano. He studied harpsichord and piano in Munich and Basel under Thomas Böckeler, Michael Eberth and Jörg-Andreas Bötticher. He has received awards in international competitions such as the one in Bruges and at the Bach Competition in Leipzig, which resulted in his being signed as official accompanist at the Bach Competition. He has made CD and radio recordings for Sony BMG and Bayerischer Rundfunk (a unit of German Public Radio) among others. He has worked with Reinhard Goebel, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic. He is a lecturer at the Academy of Music in Munich and at Munich University. Together with the singer Andreas Pehl, Schröter has formed the “ensemble raccanto”, which over the past eight years has performed more than 10 different concert programmes on stage covering different subjects, one performance taking place at the Bach Festival in Leipzig. Their CD “Il Sassone” has also earned them plaudits with both critics and the public.

Arno Jochem de La Rosée

Born in 1955 in Trier (Germany), Arno Jochem de La Rosée studied viola da gamba, baroque cello and ensemble at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, receiving his diploma in 1991 from Christophe Coin. As gambist, cellist and conductor, he has been invited to almost every country in Europe, the USA, Israel, Egypt and Syria to perform both as a soloist and as a chamber musician with renowned early music ensembles in concerts, on the radio and on TV. In addition he has made more than 80 CD recordings, among them a Bach-Goldberg jazz album with Uri Caine and a film score specially composed for him by Annette Focks (e.g. Krabat). His special love is for the gamba quartet Concerto di Viole, which he initiated (with Andreas Scholl, Emma Kirkby, Kai Wessel, Monika Mauch et al.) and with which he has performed several contemporary works by Tan Dun et al. His work in micro interval systems has led Arno Jochem de La Rosée to involve himself with non-western tonal systems and their expressive potential, then with Arabian music in theory and in practice. He spent 1991 to 2000 in Luxemburg and Paris, spending two years as a viola da gamba teacher at the conservatory in Metz and holding courses on instrumental and concert practice of the 15th through 19th centuries in Germany, France, Austria and Syria. Publications, translations and lectures round off his field of activity.

Adrian Dunskus

Adrian Dunskus was born in 1959 in Urbana (Ill.), USA, and grew up in a trilingual environment (German, French and English) in the US, France, Britain and Germany. During his high school years at the German School in Tokyo, he was able to add Japanese to that. Trained as a banker and with a degree in economics, he spent ten years as an economics and business editor for Bayerischer Rundfunk (a unit of German Public Radio). He has been a freelance corporate communications consultant and writer since 1995. In 2001, he played an advisory role in the Bayerischer Rundfunk’s production of Demofoonte. In his free time, he sings with the Heinrich-Schütz-Ensemble under Zoltàn Ambrus in Freising, and, following a 37-year hiatus, has taken up piano lessons again. He lives with his family in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm north of Munich.

Contact for La Ciaccona:

Adrian Dunskus

Unternehmenskommunikation

Schleiferweg 8

85276 Pfaffenhofen

Tel.: +49-8441-400 9130

adrian.dunskus@dunskus.de