Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex — With Christoph Waltz, Allan Clayton, Marina Viotti, Michael Volle, and Albert Dohmen

Stravinsky's neoclassical opera-oratorio masterpiece Oedipus Rex comes to the 2025 Salzburg Festival with a dream cast of award-winning vocalists — including tenor Allan Clayton in the title role, mezzo soprano Marina Viotti as Jocasta, and baritone Michael Volle as Creon — as well as the inimitable two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz filling the role of the narrator, and the great Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Vienna Philharmonic! The mounting dread of this quintessential Greek tragedy, culminating in an unbearable realization, is matched in intensity by Stravinsky's driving score, with Sophocles' text rendered in a Latin libretto by none other than Jean Cocteau. After the intermission, Salonen keeps the drama high with one of the most vividly evocative works of program music, Berlioz's exquisitely wrought Symphonie fantastique, which follows the protagonist from bucolic splendeur through unendurable heartbreak and a diabolical witches' sabbath.

Photo © SF / Marco Borrelli