Tag Archives: Richard Strauss
Elektra – Streamed by The Dallas Opera
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th September 2024The Dallas Opera is currently streaming a performance of Richard Strauss’s one-act opera Elektra from its last February run. The telecast will be available until the end of October. The full cast and video are below. This opera is the composer’s deepest dive into modernism. It is commonly asserted that he backed off from the edge of…
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Elektra – Three Deaths
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st January 2024Four of Richard Strauss’s operas are masterpieces – Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, and Die Frau Ohne Schatten. The second of these, Elektra, is considered his most harmonically adventurous work. It is often said that Strauss retreated from modernism after Elektra. I’m not sure that’s true. He used the harmonic language suited for the story he…
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Ariadne Auf Naxos in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th March 2022German opera after Mozart became increasingly self conscious. Strauss’s Ariadne Auf Naxos is an example of this solipsistic trait. It was originally intended to be a half hour divertissement to follow Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s adaption of Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Strauss also wrote incidental music for the play. The 30 minute opera grew to 90…
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Strauss Sonata in B min and Alkan
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st August 2018Richard Strauss (1864-1949) needs little introduction here. One of opera’s great composers, his career lasted from the last two decades of the the 19th century until the middle of the 20th. He was, along with Monteverdi, Handel, and Mozart, equally adept at instrumental and non-operatic vocal music as he was at opera. All the other…
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Der Rosenkavalier in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 13th May 2017Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier was the final HD telecast of the Met’s 2016-17 season. It also marked the last appearance of Renée Fleming as the Marschallin and Elina Garanca as Octavian. The production by director Robert Carsen was introduced to the Met last month. He sets the action just prior to World War I. Unlike most time shifting in…
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Salome in Santa Fe
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th August 2015John the Baptist lost his head last night in Ruritania. That seems to me to be where director Daniel Slatter set Strauss’s sonic boom. I expected the Prisoner of Zenda to appear before Narraboth killed himself. All the men except the Baptist were dressed like they thought the show was written by a different Strauss…
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Capriccio in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th April 2011Richard Strauss’ final opera, Capriccio, was broadcast over the Met’s HD network on Saturday April 23. This production was a revival of the company’s 1998 staging featuring Kiri Te Kanawa as the Countess. The opera had never been performed by the Met before 1998. Strauss’ valedictory to the theater has an odd and trivial subject considering the state…
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Recording of the Week: Four Last Songs
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th June 2010Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs are not only a personal valedictory, but they are the end of more than a century of glorious German art songs; they are the farewell to the lieder of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Mahler, and finally Strauss himself. These hibernal songs written shortly before the composer’s death, and not performed…
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