Known as a creator of astonishing images, stage director and visual artist Robert Wilson delivers a magnificent production of Mozart’s adaption of Handel’s Messias. Mozart was commissioned by Gottfried van Swieten to modernise the score fifty years after Handel’s popular composition (1742), mainly by arranging the wind parts and partially re-composing them. With Marc Minkowski a conductor has been engaged who understands perfectly how to combine baroque style with the tonal possibilities of an orchestra of the classical period like the Musiciens du Louvre. The excellent soloist quartet with Elena Tsallagova, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Richard Croft and José Coca Loza merges perfectly into Wilson’s enormous flood of images.

Wagner’s sixth opera, “Lohengrin,” tells the medieval legend of the Knight of the Swan: the knight Lohengrin is sent to protect Duchess Elsa of Brabant, who has been unjustly accused of murder. Johannes Erath directs the production, and Joana Mallwitz conducts the orchestra. Piotr Beczała plays the title role. Rachel Willis-Sørensen plays Elsa of Brabant.