Hothouse flower
To some, Anne Schwanewilms will always be the soprano in the slinky black dress who replaced Deborah Voigt at Covent Garden a decade ago.
Richard Strauss
180 pieces since 2006.
180
pieces
21
years
Song of the lark
Our Own Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin presents Natalie Dessay in recital.
Vienna pop
With Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Arabella once again on the Met’s stage, I thought I’d take a moment to revisit that opera’s most reviled character, the Fiakermilli.
Critic in crinoline
About this evening: the opera we saw was Arabella, written by a gentleman named Mr. Richard Strauss.
By Ivy Lin
The butterfly effect
Midway through the first portion of this past Wednesday’s New York City recital debut of Mme. Natalie Dessay I became very distracted by the persistent urge to try to characterize the experience of what was happening on stage, for this was, by no means, an ordinary recital and no ordinary debutante.
Light my foyer
Each year, Leon Botstein leads the American Symphony Orchestra in a concert opera or two.
Two ladies in the shade…
The simple fable at the heart of Die Frau ohne Schatten shouldn’t be difficult to parse, but Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto juggles its vaguely Jungian, vaguely Arabian Nights symbolitry as if with intent to mystify and bewilder.
Zing went the strings
This DVD
of a Diana Damrau recital (accompanied only by the harpist Xavier de Maistre) is sure to please her legions of fans.
It’s not easy being Greek
Sergey Taneyev, pupil of Tchaikovsky and teacher of Scriabin and Rachmaninov, composed just one opera, Oresteia, premiered in 1895 when he was 39.
Female on the beach
Christian Thielemann has proved himself to be the preeminent Strauss interpreter of the current generation of conductors and he’s in striking form here.
One from the vault
There has never been a successful vampire musical—so they say. But that’s just not true.
Not quite right
The last of the Strauss-Hofmannsthal collaborations, Arabella, is a real problem child.
Death, warmed over
Kaiser Overall—the name is intended to be sung in English, though the opera is in German—is probably mad, though perhaps no madder than anyone else.
Silver, plated
For all its rich evocations of 18th century Vienna and skillful balancing of slapstick and the sublime, Der Rosenkavalier’s popularity has always been rooted in its vivid principal characters.
By Adriel
5 comments
The desert song
You Parterrestrials know all about Santa Fe Opera’s amazing mountain setting and open-sided theater affording breathtaking sunsets, weather-related drama and–when the back stage wall is opened–starry backdrops, but it was my first visit, so indulge me a little.
Shadow, no doubt
Richard Strauss’s “last romantic opera,” as he called Die Frau Ohne Schatten, is and has always been a problem child.
Hier bleibt Elektra
The Met has finally released the contents of the James Levine 40th Anniversary box sets separately for those of us who didn’t have $500 lying around.
Golden shower
“This is the end of Western culture,” Richard Strauss proclaimed after a rehearsal of his penultimate opera Die Liebe der Danae, in Salzburg in 1944. The octogenarian composer, increasingly on the outs with the Nazis and switched off from contemporary music currents, could well have identified with his protagonist Jupiter, a once-mighty God caught up in an off-kilter […]
Ariadne auf budget
Since it’s put on in lavish productions at the biggest houses, sung by the biggest stars, since it wrings such a rich sound out of such a small band, and since the musical, formal and literary ambitions of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s great meta-opera are so very grand, it might be easy to […]
Gold digger of 2011
It seems a thing incredible but fifty years ago Richard Strauss was regarded as the wunderkind composer of a few tone poems, three notable operas (all produced before the First World War) and then nothing notable during forty years of repetitious senility. Even Ariadne auf Naxos, today one of the most popular works in the […]
Anna, in her own words
I was on the bus to Nürnberg today on the way to do Wagner tourism and hear Herr Sacro Fuoco tomorrow, and on the way I translated the juicy bits of the full print edition Anna Netrebko article… I was going to post it as a comment but it turns out I thought a lot […]
Maxed out
A documentary about the heldentenor Max Lorenz would seem to be an ideal prism through which to examine the moral ambiguities and trade-offs of artistic life in the Third Reich. The preeminent Siegfried, Tristan and Tannhauser of the Nazi era was considered so essential to the success of Bayreuth that Winifred Wagner told Hitler that […]
Salo, me
David McVicar’s ravishingly lurid 2008 production of Strauss’s Salome for the Royal Opera House Covent Garden has been issued as an HD-filmed DVD from Opus Arte. Now, Strauss’s music is ravishingly lurid on its own, so I came to this production, which claims as a visual source reference the Pasolini film Salo, The 120 Days […]
Blood simple
Is it possible for a performance of Richard Strauss’s Elektra to be exciting without an exciting Elektra? It of course depends on your priorities and expectations, which will ultimately determine whether such a performance, as preserved on this DVD from Baden-Baden is for you. Linda Watson’s first assumption of the punishing role of Elektra (she […]
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
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