A New Zurich Ring Convinces Noseda

[lennygoran]

A ‘Ring’ Lures the Conductor Gianandrea Noseda to Zurich


By Michael Cooper

July 2, 2018

Like many courtships, this one was sealed with a ring.

The Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda, the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, had left an operatic post this spring at the Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy, amid administrative and political upheaval. The Zurich Opera House came calling.

“I said, ‘Do you want to be my chief conductor?’” Andreas Homoki, the artistic director in Zurich, recalled recently. Then he offered Mr. Noseda the icing on the cake: “I said, ‘Do you wanted to do the ‘Ring’ with me?’”

Mr. Noseda thought it over, and decided that the chance to conduct Wagner’s epic “Ring” cycle for the first time, in a new production, was impossible to refuse.

“It is difficult to resist when a new ‘Ring’ is on the table,” Mr. Noseda said in a telephone interview.

Within a few days he had agreed to take the job. Mr. Noseda will become the next general music director in Zurich in 2021, the company announced on Monday, and will begin a new “Ring,” directed by Mr. Homoki, in the spring of 2022.

Mr. Noseda will succeed Fabio Luisi, the former principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, who is leaving Zurich to become the next music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

It is the rare case of musical chairs in which everybody gets a seat. Mr. Homoki, whose Zurich contract runs through 2025, said that Mr. Noseda’s unexpected departure for Torino had come just at the right moment: “Normally all the good conductors are committed.”

Mr. Noseda, who also appears regularly at the Met, had made an impression in Zurich conducting a new production of Prokofiev’s “The Fiery Angel” and a revival of Verdi’s “Macbeth.” He abruptly left his post in Turin this spring after the Teatro Regio, whose international reputation he had burnished, was put under new administrative leadership and canceled a planned tour of the United States for lack of funds.

He said that he looked forward to working on more German repertoire in coming seasons, especially at a company of Zurich’s caliber.


“This offer,” he said, “was really incredible.”




https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/arts ... urich.html

[John F]

Zurich's current Ring production is by Robert Wilson. Doesn't seem to have lasted very long, but then, Wilson productions are very difficult to revive.