The proven Richard Strauss trio of Renée Fleming, Sophie Koch and Christian Thielemann gets together once again at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, which continues its series of triumphs after “Rosenkavalier”. In this colorful and humorous staging by Philippe Arlaud, Strauss specialist Thielemann leads his first opera at the head of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, which performed the world premieres of nine Strauss operas. While Renée Fleming dazzles in her role debut as the spurned Ariadne, Sophie Koch, Robert Dean Smith and Jane Archibald prove themselves worthy counterparts of the American soprano.
Ariadne auf Naxos
Hugo von Hofmannsthal called ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’, which he created in close collaboration with Richard Strauss, one of the ‘most delicate of structures’. Indeed, in its complexity, the work truly does represent something utterly unique. Emily Magee and Roberto Saccà are radiant in their role debuts as Ariadne and Bacchus, just as Elena Mosuc’s Zerbinetta is incomparably dazzling and Michelle Breedt’s Composer profoundly touching. Christoph von Dohnányi, one of the great Strauss interpreters of our time, probes the depths of the incredibly finely-spun score with an elegant feel for sound, and ensures a perfect balance between operetta-like lightness and a tragic operatic tone.
Salome
From the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1997 Staged for the Royal Opera, Luc Bondy’s Salome is a terrifying study of a family of degenerates. Never decadent, it is about decay. Spare and severe, it is staged in close focus in the bowels of Herod’s palace, with every small exchange of his monstrous family spotlit in a dismal and cavernous space. The characterisations of Catherine Malfitano, Bryn Terfel, Kenneth Riegel and Anja Silja are exceptionally powerful. Conductor Christoph von Dohnányi draws every strand and fleck of colour from Strauss’s cauldron of a score. (Sung in German)
Capriccio
From the San Francisco Opera 1993: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has made the role of the Countess in Capriccio her own and her performance in Stephen Lawless’s San Francisco Opera production met with high critical praise. Her suitors are sung by David Kuebler and Simon Keenlyside and the cast also includes Tatiana Troyanos in her last role, Håkan Hagegård and Victor Braun. Richard Strauss’s opera about opera is set in the eighteenth century and the period is evoked poetically in Mauro Pagano’s exquisite salon set and Thierry Bosquet’s lavish costumes. (Sung in German)
Der Rosenkavalier
“The best of the best assembled on stage,” wrote Germany’s leading newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung after the premiere of Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. Indeed, it would be hard to find a more ideal cast for this late-Romantic Rococo pastiche anywhere in the world. As the Marschallin, stellar soprano Renée Fleming uses her velvety tones and autumnal shadings to complement the youthfully lyrical and dynamic voice of Sophie Koch as her young lover Octavian. Diana Damrau’s Sophie enhances the trio’s sparkle with her ethereal high notes. Next to Franz Hawlata as a swaggering Baron Ochs and the always impressive Franz Grundheber as Faninal, the Baden-Baden production rounds off its male leads with international tenor star Jonas Kaufmann as the “Italian Singer.” Leading his Münchner Philharmoniker, acclaimed Romantic specialist Christian Thielemann revels in Strauss’s lustrous melancholy and obtains a rarely heard transparency from the brass and woodwinds.
Der Rosenkavalier
Though the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal originally described the project as “a comedy for music”, there is also great emotional depth in this stirring portrayal of the delights and torments of love. Enhancing Strauss’s lush, late-romantic music are Otto Schenk’s rich and witty staging and, above all, Carlos Kleiber’s sensitive conducting. Internationally acclaimed singers Felicity Lott, Kurt Moll, Anne Sofie von Otter and Barbara Bonney bring their superb vocal artistry into play to ensure an unforgettable musical experience.
Salome
With his TV “Salome” production, Götz Friedrich has created a compelling transposition of Oscar Wilde’s text and Richard Strauss’s music. The palace courtyard becomes a world of its own, faces turn into landscapes of conflicting emotions, and passions into overwhelming obsessions. With filmic means, Friedrich draws the viewer’s attention to the seductive fascination of evil. In the title role, Teresa Stratas is impressively convincing as the young and sensual princess, but she is equally impressive as a singer and actress. Karl Böhm conducts the Vienna Philharmonic with a verve and dramatic impetus that fit seamlessly into the action.
Strauss, Don Juan, op.20
“The last of the great international orchestral and operatic maestri” (The Times), Sir Georg Solti is a living testament to the elegance and impeccable tastefulness of Central European music-making. Solti’s remarkable partnership with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra began in 1954, when he first led the orchestra at the Ravinia Festival. After returning to conduct the ensemble several times during the following years, he was named Music Director in 1969 and held this post for a phenomenal 22 years. He is credited with greatly extending and enhancing the orchestra’s worldwide reputation. This recording was made at the New Year’s Concert of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra held at Munich’s Herkulessaal on 31 December 1980.
Elektra
In this production, history, psychoanalysis and modern-day apocalyptic visions are presented with compelling urgency through Friedrich’s staging and Böhm’s artistic mastery. “Elektra” becomes a contemporary myth of desperate, unrelenting humanity. “Seldom before, surely, have the often erotic ideas of Hofmannsthal’s libretto been so explicitly delineated or its tragic grandeur so movingly realised. […] Leonie Rysanek, in her first and possibly only Elektra, surmounted the score’s superhuman demands with an interpretive achievement that crowns her career of more than 30 years. […] As a whole, the film showed that opera on television can be a great experience…” (Daily Telegraph)
Ariadne auf Naxos
This Vienna State Opera production, featuring Gundula Janowitz, René Kollo, Trudeliese Schmidt and Walter Berry with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Karl Böhm, drew rave reviews. In particular, the young Edita Gruberova as Zerbinetta was heralded as the “event of the evening,” whose “exquisite phrasing, sublime timbre and brilliant coloratura fireworks served up with witty and charming nonchalance brought her endless and justified ovations. This was clearly her final leap to the top of the world’s best vocalists.” (Vienna’s popular daily “Kurier,” 22.11.76)