Here is one of the truly overwhelming successes in recent opera history: Christian Thielemann’s sensational return to the Vienna State Opera to conduct his first-ever performances there of Richard Strauss, with an ideal cast in an acclaimed production of Ariadne auf Naxos, featuring Peter Matic, Sophie Koch, Soile Isokoski and Johan Botha, stage directed by Sven-Eric Bechtolf. “A triumph […] world stars and ensemble shine” (Die Presse). “Strauss in all his glory”(Wiener Zeitung).
Salzburg Festival 2016: Die Liebe der Danae
A work narrowly linked to the Festival’s rich history, Richard Strauss’ Die Liebe der Danae (The Love of Danae) surely ranks among the highlights of this year’s Salzburg Festival. Krassimira Stoyanova, regular fixture at the Salzburg Festival, is heading a truly supreme cast and emerges as the “one in a thousand, the true Strauss lyric-dramatic soprano who can soar and swoop, working miracles on phrases that never stop coming” (The Artsdesk). Bass-Baritone Tomasz Konieczny, “sings this Jupiter almost unsurpassably” (FAZ). Alvis Hermanis’ colourful production brings oriental flair to the Salzach, his “staging was spectacular above all else” (Opera Today). Labelled as “too beautiful to be true”, the score presents a retrospect of Strauss’ lifework.
Salzburg Festival: Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier
“Harry Kupfer and Franz Welser-Möst re-create a wonderful Rosenkavalier.” (FAZ) “Cheers for Welser-Möste and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. (…) The best music theatre production ever of Salzburg Festival.” (Neue Osnarbrücker Zeitung) “With eyes wide shut you could hear the flurries of Straussian invention whirring, whirling, whistling and waltzing round the orchestra pit, making the score sound like a three-hour symphonic poem with voices rather than a “comedy in music”. (Financial Times)
Salzburg Easter Festival: Strauss, Arabella
A “lyric comedy” is how Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal described their final collaboration, on which they worked between 1927 and 1929. Arabella revolves around the true love between two very different couples – the love that unites two people forever “in joy and sorrow, hurt and forgiveness”, as Arabella herself puts it at the end of the opera. With René Fleming in the title role and a supporting cast that includes Thomas Hampson, Gabriela Benacková and the young tenor Daniel Behle – surely a star of the future – this production from the Salzburg Easter Festival was the first of the piece at the Festival since 1958. Under the Strauss specialist Christian Thielemann, it featured a Strauss ensemble that could hardly be bettered today. Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson are a “dream couple for Richard Strauss” (Salzburger Nachrichten).
R. Strauss, Capriccio
American soprano Renée Fleming, renowned for her commanding musicianship, intelligence and interpretive abilities, sings one of her signature roles, the elegant Countess in Richard Strauss’s Capriccio in this delightful production from the Vienna State Opera. Renée Fleming stars alongside the Danish baritone Bo Skovhus and conductor Christoph Eschenbach, who leads the Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera. Also performing are Michael Schade, Markus Eiche, Kurt Rydl and Angelika Kirchschlager.
Arabella
A “lyric comedy” is what Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal called their last joint work, written between 1927 and 1929. In this acclaimed performance at the Vienna State Opera, director Sven-Eric Bechtolf shifts the action from 1860, when the work was written, to the 1920s, both eras that witnessed a massive economic crisis. Emily Magee debuted to great acclaim in the title role. Genia Kühmeier as her little sister Zdenka transfigures the role with her lyrically expressive soprano voice. She is ably supported by the splendidly radiant tenor voice of Michael Schade as the young officer Matteo. Conductor Franz Welser-Möst lends the brilliant tone colours of Strauss’s music a decidedly Viennese character with the result that the audience enjoys a production that is one of the brightest gems in Strauss’s opera oeuvre and an experience perhaps only to be encountered in Vienna.
Salzburg Festival 2012: Ariadne auf Naxos
“The vocals are pure gold”, wrote the Berliner Zeitung. Emily Magee masters the challenge of her complex character’s richly nuanced vocal lines, while Elena Mosuc as Zerbinetta produced her coloratura cascades with breathtaking ease, and Jonas Kaufmann received accolades from the critics for his role debut as the “best Bacchus ever” (Berliner Zeitung). Daniel Harding and the Vienna Philharmonic provided the necessary musical foundations to this performance of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, in a special version for the Salzburg Festival created by Sven-Eric Bechtolf of the original version from 1912. Written immediately after the great success of Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos was a combination of mythological opera and Molière’s drama Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, though Strauss expunged all trace of the latter in his second version of 1916. To mark the centenary of the first version, a sensational project has created a daring production fulfilling the composer’s original dream of a “Gesamtkunstwerk”.
Elektra
Richard Strauss’s “Elektra” is an Expressionist masterpiece that shakes the listener to the core with its powerfully expressive chords, spooky waltzes and mad dance of triumph. The orchestra is so rich that only the finest orchestras can do full justice to this work, such as the Münchner Philharmoniker here under Christian Thielemann, in a production by Herbert Wernicke recorded at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. Topping the superb cast are Linda Watson in the title role, Jane Henschel, Manuela Uhl, Albert Dohmen and René Kollo.
Die Frau ohne Schatten
“A shining hour”, trumpeted Vienna’s Kurier after the premiere of Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” at the Salzburg Festival, which was also the premiere of Christian Thielemann as opera conductor there. True to the Festival’s tradition, this production features a line-up of great Strauss singers, such as Anne Schwanewilms, Stephen Gould, Wolfgang Koch, Michaela Schuster and Evelyn Herlitzius. Christof Loy’s production is set in the mid 1950s in the Sofiensäle, a celebrated Viennese recording studio at the time. The singers portray singers from the Wiener Staatsoper recording “Die Frau ohne Schatten”.
BBC Proms 2014: Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich
“This beautiful Prom marked the end of an era. David Zinman’s final concert as chief conductor of the Zurich Tonhalle was a superb example of his intelligent musicianship” (The Guardian). Program: RICHARD STRAUSS Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28 / ANTONIN DVORÁK Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53 / LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral”, Op. 68