Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae returns to Salzburg

By Matthew Rye, 07 August 2016

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“Stoyanova has a naturally luscious voice for Strauss”

Reviewed at Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg on 5 August 2016

Strauss R., Die Liebe der Danae

Franz Welser-Möst, Conductor

Alvis Hermanis, Director, Set Designer

Juozas Statkevičius, Costume Designer

Krassimira Stoyanova, Danae

Norbert Ernst, Mercury

Gerhard Siegel, Midas

Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Pollux

Tomasz Konieczny, Jupiter

Olga Bezsmertna, Europa

Mária Celeng, Semele

Regine Hangler, Xanthe

Michaela Selinger, Alkmene

Jennifer Johnston, Leda

Pavel Kolgatin, King 1

Andreas Früh, King 2

Ryan Speedo Green, King 3

Jongmin Park, King 4

Vienna Philharmonic

Concert Association Vienna State Opera Chorus

Ernst Raffelsberger, Choirmaster / chorus director

Ronny Dietrich, Dramaturgy

Gudrun Hartmann, Director

Uta Gruber-Ballehr, Set Designer

Ineta Sipunova, Video

Gleb Filshtinsky, Lighting Designer

Salome in Riga, Winehouse at the Western Wall... with robots

Eleanor Knight, 21st February

The limitations of AI are demonstrated in Alvis Hermanis’ problematic new production of Salome at Latvian National Opera.

**111

Tears of blood among the cherry blossoms

Mark Pullinger, 7th December

A beautiful production by Alvis Hermanis of Madama Butterfly to open La Scala's new season, but it was Riccardo Chailly's presentation of Puccini's original 1904 score which caught the ear.

****1

Two Toscas a century apart in Berlin

Ako Imamura, 13th October

Staatsoper Berlin revives its new production of Tosca with an excellent cast including a last minute substitution of the tenor.

***11

Grotesque, gritty Die Soldaten at La Scala

James Imam, 17th January

Tonight's setting of Die Soldaten in a WWI stable is so sordid you can almost feel the rats gnawing. Alvis Hermanis was right to warn in a newspaper interview that we would leave the theatre feeling shocked.

***11

A bewildering Berlin Tosca

Christie Franke, 3rd October

Alvis Hermanis' new Tosca for the Berliner Staatsoper mixes innovation with tradition in an interesting, but ultimately ineffective, way.

***11

Zimmermann's Die Soldaten at the Salzburg Festival

Zwölftöner, 26th August

The German thinker Theodor Adorno once wrote that a musical setting of Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck, considered in its own literary right a masterpiece, may well have proved redundant.

****1

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Matthew Rye

Matthew read music at Oxford and worked in music journalism for 30 years as a writer, critic and editor. He wrote numerous programme and CD booklet notes, spent 13 years as a Daily Telegraph critic, worked at BBC Music Magazine and was reviews editor of The Strad. He also wrote for The Wagner Journal and Opera and blogged at ferneklang.blogspot.co.uk. He was general editor of 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die (Cassell Illustrated, 2007) and was the author of a new series of eBooks, Masterpieces of Music (Erudition).

Going for gold: Strauss' Die Liebe der Danae returns to Salzburg