Richard Wagner
Wesendoncklieder
Stehe still!
Der Engel
Im Treibhaus
Schmerzen
Träume

Richard Wagner/Franz Liszt
Am stillen Herd Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Sigurd von Koch
Die geheimnisvolle Flöte
Die Lotusblumen
Die traurige Frühlingsnacht
Der unwürdige
Die gehemnisvolle Flöte
Herbstgefühl

– entracte –

Gustav Mahler
Kindertotenlieder
Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n
Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen
Wenn dein Mütterlein
Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen
In diesem Wetter

Kurt Weill
Surabaya Johnny
Nannas Lied
Youkali

Nina Stemme, the greatest Isolde of her generation, is also an exceptional recitalist, equally at home with the Wesendonck-Lieder in which the figure of Isolde was conceived, as with the visionary modernism of Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder or the ironic detachment of Kurt Weill. For her return to the Grand Théâtre, the Swedish soprano introduces us to one of her little-known compatriots, Sigurd von Koch, a contemporary of Mahler, whose cycle Die geheimnisvolle Flöte (“The Mysterious Flute”) is a symbolist anthology of classical Chinese poems. Friedrich Rückert, the poet chosen by Mahler for his ‘Songs on the Death of Children’, had lost two of his own to scarlet fever. Nina Stemme will perform this difficult exercise of seemingly impossible grief and anguish, deluded by fantastical hope and which nevertheless ends in the peacefulness of transcendence.