Today : world première of 'Thérèse' by Philipp Maintz in Salzburg

Today, the Easter Festival in Salzburg presents the world première of Thérèse, a chamber opera composed by Philipp Maintz, with a libretto by Otto Katzameier after Emile Zola's novel.

(c) Paavo Blafield

It is the composer's second opera after Maldoror (Munich, International Festival for New Music Theatre, 2010).

Thérèse lives in an arranged marriage with her cousin Camille, suffering unspeakably. She falls in love with Laurent, her husband’s best friend. Now she experiences a passion and happiness she would never have considered possible previously. The absolute wish to live together eclipses all else, and they decide to murder the husband. Now the way seems clear, but this open path is the very thing irreparably damaging their bond. Both are incapable of stopping the logic of their love’s death. Assigning blame only demonstrates their powerlessness in the face of the pointless fatalism of their development. The only communality they are still able to achieve is a suicide pact. (reproduced from the Easter Festival website)

The cast includes bass baritone Otto Katzameier (Laurent), soprano Marisol Montalvo (Thérèse), countertenor Tim Severloh (Camille) and mezzo Renate Behle (Mme Raquin). Nicolas André conducts Members of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Georges Delnon directs.

The venue is the Large University Auditorium (Grosse Universitätsaula). Further performances are planned in Hamburg in May, at the Elbphilharmonie (Kleiner Saal) during the International Music Festival.

The score is published by Bärenreiter.

My collection of catalogues of works by contemporary composers

In the 1990s, I visited regularly the Musicora music fair in Paris. Every year, I collected all composer's catalogue of works I could find there, from publishers or Music information centers. I also wrote to several companies to receive more by mail.
Unfortunately, since the internet has appeared, it is more difficult to receive these catalogues in a paper version. Most of them can be downloaded.

I now have about 835 different catalogues of 650 different composers. I have scanned their covers and uploaded them to a flickr folder :
https://www.flickr.com/photos/22297671@N03/sets/72157648887120567/

The last four digits of the file name gives the date of publication of the catalogue. If the number is 0000, it means no date is available.

Among the publishers are : Alphonse Leduc, Bärenreiter, Boosey & Hawkes, Breitkopf and Härtel, Durand, Edition Peters, Edizioni Suvini Zerboni (ESZ), G. Schirmer, Gérard Billaudot, Ricordi, Salabert, Schott Mainz, Sikorski, Universal Edition, Wilhelm Hansen, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish Music Information Centers.