Tree and tree again

First, a rare Lucia Popp-Christian Thielemann collaboration; then Soile Isokoski conducted by Marek Janowski; and finally, briefly rising turn-of-this-century star Alexandra van der Weth pursued by Johan Botha’s heroic Apollo.

While Popp earlier recorded the opera with Bernard Haitink, today’s performance features the Czech soprano just a few years before her early death in a Geneva staging led by Strauss specialist Thielemann relatively early in his opera career. Her Gaea, Polish contralto Jadwiga Rappé, also turns up eight years later for a Paris concert performance with Isokoski, whose lovely Strauss recording, which includes the Vier Letzte Lieder, is one I return to often.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s German soprano van der Weth was one of the opera world’s most buzzed-about young singers following her 1997 breakthrough in Christof Loy’s staging of Massenet’s Manon in Düsseldorf. Her repertoire ranged from Norma and Lucia di Lammermoor to Daphne, Lulu, and Boulevard Solitude.

Santa Fe featured her as Lucia while Lyric Opera of Chicago mounted a revival of La Traviata for her in 2003. I didn’t have a recollection of her having appeared at the Met, but sure enough she dropped into the venerable Franco Zeffirelli La bohème staging as Musetta opposite Pamela Armstrong and Alfredo Portilla for just four performances in late 2001.

Two years later after the Chicago Violetta, she had a vocal crisis at just 35 and withdrew for several years. She returned several years later appearing only with smaller German companies.

Strauss: Daphne

Daphne: Lucia Popp
Gaea: Jadwiga Rappé
Mägde: Martina Musacchio / Janeen Franz
Apollo: Michael Pabst
Leukippos: Claes Hakan Ahnsjö
Peneios: Hans Tschammer
Schäfer: Leonard Graus / Brett Martin / Wolfgang Barta / Marc Mazuir

Choeur du Grand Theatre de Geneve
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Christian Thielemann
Grand Theatre de Geneve
12 January 1991
Broadcast

Daphne: Soile Isokoski
Gaea: Jadwiga Rappé
Mägde: Jialin Zhang & Gaële le Roi
Apollo: John Horton Murray
Leukippos: Torsten Kerl
Peneios: Peter Rose
Schäfer: Bernard Polisset, Charles Alves da Cruz, Jacques Scamps & Mario Castagnetti

Choeur et Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Conductor : Marek Janowski
Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris
26 November 1999
Broadcast

Daphne: Alexandra von der Weth
Gaea: Jane Henschel
Mägde: Rebecca Nash / Gweneth-Ann Jeffers
Apollo: Johan Botha
Leukippos: Roberto Saccà
Peneios: Alfred Reiter
Schäfer: James Rutherford / Peter Auty / Graeme Broadbent / Darren Jeffery

Conductor: Stefan Soltesz
Royal Opera, Covent Garden
15 May 2002
Broadcast

Each Daphne can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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Photo: CC BY-SA 4.0