Croatian bass-baritone, David Oštrek, studied at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien. In 2015/16, he joined the opera studio at Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, and in 2018/19 became a member of the ensemble. He has also appeared at the Bregenz Festival, Staatstheater Braunschweig, Irish National Opera and Gstaad Menuhin Festival.

Oštrek has worked with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Simon Rattle and Simone Young. Concert appearances include the Händel-Festspiele in Halle and Karlsruhe, and performances with Beethoven Orchestra Bonn. His debut album, Rossini – L’Italiana in Algeri, was released in 2024 on Pan Classics.

Mexican tenor Andrés Moreno García has already enjoyed success in Mexico, the USA, Italy and Israel. He has appeared at the Yale Opera in Mozart’s Così, Massenet’s Don Quichotte, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and in Israel in La Traviata, as well as in La Bohème at the Musica è Musica festival in Italy, Mozart’s Magic Flute, Kurt Weill’s Street Scene and in Barber’s A hand of Bridge with the Hartt Opera Theatre and in Gianni Schicchi and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci with Opera Connecticut. On the concert stage, he has been engaged as a soloist for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Mozart’s Requiem, among others

In 2017, he won the Phyllis Curtin Career Entry Prize and a sponsorship award after placing first in the Metropolitan Opera’s New England Regional Auditions. He was a scholarship holder of the Liz Mohn Cultural Foundation and a member of the Intern. Opera Studio of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and has been a member of the ensemble since 2021. He has already appeared here in The Magic Flute, Turandot and Falstaff, among others.

The Berliner Operngruppe e.V. was founded in 2010 by conductor Felix Krieger to present operas in Berlin that are outside the usual opera repertoire and have either never been heard here or have not been heard here for many decades. After its first performances at Radialsystem V, the Berlin opera group has been performing with its own choir and orchestra at Konzerthaus Berlin since 2013. The Berliner Operngruppe’s highly acclaimed semistaged productions include the German premiere of Donizetti’s Betly as well as the Berlin premieres of Verdi’s Stiffelio, Puccini’s Edgar and Mascagni’s Iris and, most recently, the world premiere of Donizetti’s Dalinda in May 2023.

www.berlineroperngruppe.de

The Berliner Operngruppe e.V. was founded in 2010 by conductor Felix Krieger to present operas in Berlin that are outside the usual opera repertoire and have either never been heard here or have not been heard here for many decades. After its first performances at Radialsystem V, the Berlin opera group has been performing with its own choir and orchestra at Konzerthaus Berlin since 2013. The Berliner Operngruppe’s highly acclaimed semistaged productions include the German premiere of Donizetti’s Betly as well as the Berlin premieres of Verdi’s Stiffelio, Puccini’s Edgar and Mascagni’s Iris and, most recently, the world premiere of Donizetti’s Dalinda in May 2023.

www.berlineroperngruppe.de

Felix Krieger founded the Berlin Opera Group in 2010 and has been its artistic director ever since. He was a junior piano student at the conservatory in his home town of Freiburg i.Br. before studying conducting in Hamburg and with Carlo Maria Giulini in Fiesole (Italy). He began his career as Claudio Abbado’s assistant with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and has since conducted numerous major orchestras, including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris and the London Sinfonietta.

Guest conducting engagements have taken him to major opera houses such as the Staatsoper Berlin, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Semperoper and the Opéra National de Paris. In 2018, Sony Classical released his album with works by the Spanish composer Benet Casablancas. Benet Casablancas, played by the London Sinfonietta. With the Berlin Opera Group, he also released the complete recording of Mascagni’s Iris in 2021.

An Italian composer and conductor, Pietro Mascagni is chiefly remembered in the first capacity as the composer of the one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana. As a conductor he worked at La Scala in Milan, increasingly associated with the regime of Mussolini. He died in Rome in 1945.

Operas

Mascagni won his first success with Cavalleria rusticana (‘Rustic Chivalry’), first staged in Rome in 1890. This is an example of verismo (operatic realism) that exercised considerable influence. The opera deals with a tale of love and jealousy in a Sicilian village, the drama ending in the death of Turiddu, the young Santuzza’s faithless lover: she betrays him to a man whom he has deceived. Of Mascagni’s later operas, L’amico Fritz (‘Friend Fritz’) and Iris, the latter set in Japan, won some success. Both have provided popular tenor arias.