Afraid of their own shadows Afraid of their own shadows

Later this month the Met at last revives its striking Herbert Wernicke production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, prompting a Chris’s Cache preview of three live recordings of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s fanciful if knotty masterpiece.

Hopelessly human Hopelessly human

The Boston Symphony and Alban Berg’s “Wir arme Leut” spread musical riches at Carnegie Hall.

‘Ja, ja’ land ‘Ja, ja’ land

We leave behind the Vienna of the 1740s, the time of breeches, fans and white wigs.

And in the ‘how’ And in the ‘how’

Our selected Rosenkavalier video overview closes out the 20th-century selections, crosses the millennial mark, and includes the first of our performances to depart from the opera’s prescribed 18th-century setting.

Katharina’s church

In the summer of 2007, at the height of the heated speculation and public debates over who would succeed Wolfgang Wagner as the head of the Bayreuth Festival, his daughter, Katharina Wagner presented a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the festival, replacing the mind-numbingly boring one by her father (his third at…