As in my Verdi list, I have listed the titles of Richard Strauss’s operas in three different colors: Red means I have seen the opera at least once (but usually more often than that) on stage, with costumes, stage sets, lighting, acting, etc. Green means I have only seen it in Read More …
Salome, by Richard Strauss, is a difficult opera to cast. The singer of the title role has to be a dramatic soprano with a huge voice that will carry over a full-power 110-piece orchestra, which usually means a Brunnhilde-type in her fifties. On the other hand, the character of Salome Read More …
Salome was the daughter of Herodias and the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea. Her story is told in the Bible (Mark 6:21-28): And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Read More …
The opera house on Lake Zürich was designed and built in 1891 by the Vienna architects Fellner and Helmer, who were involved in building no fewer than forty-eight theaters and opera houses in cities all over Europe between 1873 and 1919, including for instance Augsburg, Gießen, Salzburg and Prague. The Read More …
In 2017 I went back to Nancy and saw David Hermann’s staging of the opera Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). This is an opera I have seen many times before, for instance in Koblenz (as mentioned in my post Operas in Koblenz) and in two different productions in Read More …
The State Opera in Stuttgart has a great reputation for high quality, innovative opera productions. I have seen quite a few operas in Stuttgart, including L’italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algeria) by Gioacchino Rossini, The Coronation of Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi, Die Walküre by Richard Wagner and Doktor Read More …
The town of Friedrichsdorf (= “Friedrich’s village”), Germany, was founded in 1687 by Huguenots, French Protestants who had fled to escape religious prosecution in France. They were invited to settle here by the local ruler, Friedrich II (1633-1708), who at the time was the Landgraf of a small, impoverished and Read More …
The Salzburg Festival is one of the world’s largest and most intensive summer music and drama festivals, with more than two hundred performances packed into six weeks in July and August each summer. I have never attended any of these performances, both because they are beyond my price range and Read More …
The Théâtre Royal de Liège, home of the Royal Opera of the Wallonia, was closed for several years to be reconstructed and enlarged. When I was there in 2011, I had the impression that the original building would be dwarfed by the new tower for stage machinery which was under Read More …
Castelvecchio, the Old Castle, was built by the Scala family during the 14th century when they were the rulers of Verona. It became their residence and fortress during the rule of Cangrande II in 1354. Cangrande, appropriately enough, translates as “top dog”. Like most buildings that are now called the Read More …