Projects

For the 2023/24 and 2024/25 seasons, the Orchestra Divertimento Viennese is planning a concert project, in collaboration with the Alexander Zemlinsky Fund and the Upper Austrian Brass Band, dedicated to the rediscovery of a forgotten treasure from Alexander Zemlinsky's oeuvre. Together with soprano Camilla Nylund and pianist Shani Diluka, the orchestra is developing this into an extraordinary concert evening entirely in the spirit of the dazzling fin de siècle.

Robert Stolz's film operetta "Das Frauenparadies" inspired the title of our program. Filmed in Vienna in 1936 and adapted to this modern times, the operetta takes you into the world of Viennese fashion. One of the most beautiful songs - "Sag, was Du träumst" - also enchants the audience of our program.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Vienna had achieved a cultural diversity and flourishing that was unparalleled. This fascinating epoch, also called the Fin de Siècle, denotes a threshold period between late Romanticism and Impressionism, between Historicism and Art Nouveau, between tradition and modernity.

In 2022 we celebrated the 125th birthday of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. This relational project is dedicated to this great Austrian composer of the 20th century. In the 1910s and 20s he was considered the compositional prodigy of Europe and created many masterpieces in opera, symphonic and chamber music. Ostracized by the Nazis and dispossessed of his possessions, the composer of Jewish descent was eventually forced to emigrate to the United States.

Together with the singers Rafael Fingerlos and Norbert Ernst, we focus on Jewish composers who had to leave Vienna due to the antisemitic oppression of the Nazi regime, but whose love for the city remained undiminished in their exile. They thought of their hometown with great longing and nostalgia, a fact clearly reflected in their works.

This concert programme combines compositions by Jewish composers which are very different, but all share a strong spiritual vein. We dedicate ourselves to three extraordinary works from the first half of the 20th century by Darius Milhaud, Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein. The well-known Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager appears in two very different roles.

We are delighted to collaborate with Camilla Nylund, the legendary Wagner and Strauss singer who has triumphed on all the world’s major stages. Here, she explored the songs of Zemlinsky and Korngold for the first time and also performed Leonard Bernstein’s important works for soprano.

“I’m a Stranger Here Myself“ – the title of the well-known song from the musical comedy One Touch of Venus (1943) by Kurt Weill could hardly be more befitting for our concert project in which we focus on composers whose religion and ancestry were once rejected in Austria and Germany, who were ostracized and finally driven to emigration. Together with Angelika Kirchschlager, we trace Kurt Weill’s biography, making emigration palpable and audible in music.

Located directly next to the sea, the Auditorio Alfredo Kraus in Las Palmas is the ideal place for a gala concert featuring works from opera, ballet, operetta and Viennese music, under the promising title La Magia del Vals. The soloists are the soprano Estefanía Perdomo, a native of the Canary Islands, and the Austrian tenor Paul Schweinester.