(Photo: A Zeltina) “Salome” undoubtedly stands as one of the most significant works in the history of German opera. The elements Wagner outlined in his works reached Strauss as a direct torrent of influence, and it is precisely in “Salome” where Strauss finally finds—after “Guntram” and “Feuersnot”—a personal, absolute, and unmistakably original musical language. I have always perceived in “Salome” {…}
(Photo: Ashley Taylor) Richard Strauss’s one-act opera “Elektra” (1909), with a searing libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, stands as a monumental achievement in 20th-century music drama. A radical adaptation of Sophocles’ tragedy, it plunges the listener into the tormented psyche of Elektra, obsessed with avenging her father Agamemnon’s murder by her mother, Klytämnestra, with the help of her lover Aegisth. {…}
(Photo: Matt Dine) On June 6, 2025, Carnegie Hall hosted the American Symphony Orchestra’s concert revival of Richard Strauss’s first opera, “Guntram.” Rarely mentioned alongside “Salomé” or “Der Rosenkavalier,” “Guntram” reveals a young composer grappling with grand ideas. Strauss stumbled, learned, and went on to compose a total of fourteen operas. Audiences can hear Wagner in nearly every bar of {…}
(Photo: ©2025 Chris Lee) Conductor and Lerman-Newbauer Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the Met Orchestra at NYC’s Carnegie Hall for a special night featuring Richard Strauss works on Thursday, June 12, 2025, showcasing one of the world’s leading lyric-dramatic sopranos, Elza van den Heever, who just concluded her season of performances as Salome at Met Opera. The night was full of standing {…}
I. In a city as operatically overdetermined as Berlin, even a new production of Richard Strauss’s “Die Frau ohne Schatten” might be expected to pass with respectable indifference. But when Tobias Kratzer mounted the late-Romantic behemoth this January at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, capping a Strauss trilogy that had begun with “Arabella” and “Intermezzo,” the result was not just another {…}
(Photos: Vincent Pontet) From May 21 to June 5, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées presents “Der Rosenkavalier” in a production by the famous and highly controversial director Krzysztof Warlikowski. Even though the French music lovers, and especially the Parisians, are delighted to see this masterpiece of an opera from the beginning of the twentieth century back in the capital – something {…}
(Photo: Ruth Walz) Like other fairytales, Richard Strauss’ opera, “Die Frau ohne Shatten,” with its cast of human and supernatural beings, otherworldly locations and a magical plot, makes use of symbols and metaphor to carry deeper messages and thus opens itself up to a wide range of interpretations. Katie Mitchell, the director for Dutch National Opera’s recent production, certainly took {…}
(Photo: Agnese Zeltiņa | Files.fm.) I’m not generally given to elaborating on opera plots; preferring for the audience to discover them for themselves, even where the outline of the tale is fairly well known. Alas, I feel somewhat compelled to at least superficially proffer some brief abridgement of “Salome,” if only to illustrate and accentuate the bizarre, outlandish and frequently {…}
(Photo: Brescia e Amisano © Teatro all Scala) Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal confessed that he drew inspiration for “Der Rosenkavalier’s” libretto from Molière’s comedies, weaving them together with the roles of Italian commedia dell’arte. He wrote, “The characters were there, performing right in front of us: the Buffoon, the Old Man, the Young Man, the Lady, the Cherubino… Each {…}
(Photo credit: © ROH 2024/Tristram Kenton) Had a family bust-up over the holidays? Don’t worry – it could be worse. Richard Strauss’ “Elektra,” with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal from his 1903 play of the same, took a dysfunctional family of the opera stage to new extremes, boiling up Sophocles’ tale of matricide in the Freudian pressure cooker of {…}
(Photo: Tamara Cerna SofiG) Immediately after the curtain came down on Brno National Theater’s excellent production of Richard Strauss’ “Salome,” OperaWire nipped around to the stage door for an interview appointment with Slovakian soprano Linda Ballová, who had just produced a stunning performance in the titular role. It is unlikely that many opera-goers in Western countries will have heard the {…}
