Operatic history can be cruel where multiple works with the same subject are concerned
This year’s treat was Vittorio Gnecchi’s Cassandra, completed around 1905
I have always wanted to see a production of Strauss’ Elektra that made my ears bleed.
This week, I offer you a classic rendition of Richard Strauss’ tale of the House of Atreus starring Ursula Schröder-Feinen, Astrid Varnay, Leonie Rysanek, Theo Adam, and Hans Hopf under Karl Böhm’s direction.
The haunted Mycenae of Patrice Chéreau’s enthralling production of Richard Strauss’s Elektra had seized its viewers in an unrelenting vise that never relaxed even at its quietly shattering conclusion.
The focus in this 1974 performance of Salome from Orange is (mostly) on the Herodes of Jon Vickers.
Capriccio was a great pleasure on Friday night, March 4. This was a co-production of Opera Philadelphia and The Curtis Institute, presented in the intimate Pearlman Theater at the Kimmel Center.
This was a Rosenkavalier that aspired to excellence and almost achieved it.
God, I love that photo of Lisa della Casa. She can sing, too!
One Saturday afternoon during my freshman year in college, Richard Strauss’s Elektra made me fall in love with Ursula Schröder-Feinen—or maybe vice versa.
I guess you have spoken: “Bring us insane divas in operas we already know!”
Homer, inspired by many a muse, sang not of sequels to his Iliad.
Since the 1916 version of Ariadne auf Naxos which we all know and love had its premiere at Wiener Staatsoper, it seems most appropriate to bring you this 1967 performance from the same venue, with a legendary cast at its zenith.
I was greatly anticipating Karita Mattila’s recital on Friday in Toronto’s Koerner Hall.
Richard Strauss’s many one-act operas make excellent concert programs, both for their length (usually under two hours) and the primary place each gives the orchestration, a specialty where Strauss’s brilliance seldom deserted him.
Harry Lawrence Freeman’s Voodoo, begun sometime before 1914, was completed and first heard on radio in May, 1928, then staged on Broadway later that year—seven years before Porgy and Bess, please note.
“Disciplined and intelligent.”
It will come to no surprise to followers of the direction of Stefan Herheim (or to readers of La Cieca’s gushing fangirl appreciations of his work) that his Stuttgart production of Der Rosenkavalier was as “delightfully busy” as we have come to expect.
Christian Thielemann’s spirited, precise conducting and the superb, sumptuous playing of the Staatskapelle Dresden are the finest features of this strongly cast performance of Strauss’s Arabella.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith… I am nothing.”
Soprano Renée Fleming is certainly making the role of the Countess in Richard Strauss’s final opera Capriccio the focus of her late-career years.
The appeal of Ariadne auf Naxos (for me anyway) is the acknowledgment that underneath it all, opera (and all other forms of “high art”) is really show business.
None of my previous Elektra experiences prepared me for this stunning, overwhelming performance from the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
“Conduct Salome and Elektra as if they were by Mendelssohn: Fairy music.” Seriously, how often has that happened?
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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