As Phaedra’s tragic, all-consuming passion for her stepson Hippolytus has fascinated artists for centuries, Trove Thursday offers two of its lesser-known musical settings: Pizzetti’s opera Fedra with Régine Crespin and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson performing the cantata Phaedra, Britten’s final vocal work.
If Frank Castorf‘s work on Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth accomplishes nothing else, it should serve as a sort of loud disorganized reminder of the dangers of indulging in the intentional fallacy.
Noticing how often she turns up lately, one might guess that the operatic “heroine” for the global economic crunch is Medea, the mythological Greek sorceress and filicide.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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