Having had many memorable encounters with these characters before, I had been looking forward to encountering them again in an ambitious contemporary Oresteia, but I left the Armory feeling that writer-director Robert Icke just didn’t get it.
Mortality is ugly—it smells, it makes uncomfortable noises, it takes its time; and then there is the overwhelming sense of dread and helplessness.
What to do with all those glorious short operas: play them alone or find companion pieces?
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.
His 75-minute setting of Oedipus in Kolonos, heard in a live 2009 performance on MDR Klassik, illustrates how Mendelssohn tried to link ancient forms with Romantic-era sensibilities by fashioning harmonically adventurous chorales and believable characters instead of abstract musical representations of mythical figures.
Say this about Oedipus: The character’s got staying power.
Among symbolic classical tropes, one of my favorites (perhaps because only another classicist will understand it) is Nessus’ Shirt, an emblem of glory (a promotion, say, or an expensive luxury) that destroys you.
Carl Orff’s 1949 opera (or quasi-opera, as some critics have called it) Antigonae has been issued on 2 CDs on the Profil label, in a Munich radio recording from 1958. This recording, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch and featuring the German soprano Martha Mödl in the title role, is a most welcome addition to this work’s…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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