Composer Strauss Biography

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ARABELLA Composer Biography: Richard Strauss Richard Strauss (June 11, 1864–September 8, 1949) was a German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. Born into a family of musicians, he received a formal music education from his father and wrote his first composition at the age of six. He heard his first Wagner operas in 1874; the composer would go on to hugely influence Strauss’s style. He became the Music Director in Meiningen at the age of 21 and, a year later, the Musical Director at the Munich Court Opera. 1886 saw the peak of his skill at orchestration. In 1889, he moved to Weimar and became 2nd Kappelmeister. He married soprano Pauline de Ahna in 1894. Salome premiered in 1905, and Strauss became known as the father of modern opera music. His operas during this time were met with extremely mixed reactions. Elektra, like Salome, was considered extremely risqué by critics. After World War I, Strauss’s fortune was confiscated as “enemy assets”. He began to compose Lieder again during this time. In 1919, he was appointed Vienna State Opera Music Director and fought against its image as an outdated institution that produced only traditional operas by bringing new productions to the opera house. Wishing to confront the bleakness of the post-war era with cultural beauty, he helped to co-found the Salzburg Festival in 1920. He also toured in the USA and South America during this time. The interwar period saw the production of more light-hearted tunes and musical comedies. This is a stark contrast to the following period in which he was made President of the German State Music Bureau “Reichsmusikkammer” in 1933. He was unable to convince others in his fight against the Aryan policies of Hitler and thus incurred Goebbels’s wrath. Eventually, he escaped to Switzerland in 1945, where he experienced great financial hardship. He relived some of his old fame before his death in 1949. For more in-depth biographical information on Strauss, please see these websites: • http://www.richardstrauss.at/biography.html • https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Strauss .

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RICHARD STRAUSS SALOME Rehearsal Room Vida Miknevičiūtė (Salome) PRESENTING VICTORIAN OPERA PRESENTS PARTNER SALOME OPERA in ONE ACT
RICHARD STRAUSS SALOME Rehearsal Room Vida Miknevičiūtė (Salome) PRESENTING VICTORIAN OPERA PRESENTS PARTNER SALOME OPERA IN ONE ACT Composer Richard Strauss Librettist Hedwig Lachmann Based on Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé Conductor Richard Mills AM Director Cameron Menzies Set Designer Christina Smith Costume Designer Anna Cordingley Lighting Designer Gavan Swift Choreographer Elizabeth Hill-Cooper CAST Salome Vida Miknevičiūtė Herod Ian Storey Jochanaan Daniel Sumegi Herodias Liane Keegan Narraboth James Egglestone Page of Herodias Dimity Shepherd Jews Paul Biencourt, Daniel Todd, Soldiers Alex Pokryshevsky, Timothy Reynolds, Carlos E. Bárcenas, Jerzy Kozlowski Raphael Wong Cappadocian Kiran Rajasingam Nazarenes Simon Meadows, Slave Kathryn Radcliffe Douglas Kelly with Orchestra Victoria Concertmaster Yi Wang 22, 25, 27 FEBRUARY 2020 Palais Theatre Original premiere 9 December 1905, Semperoper Dresden Duration 90 minutes, no interval Sung in German with English surtitles PRODUCTION PRODUCTION TEAM Production Manager Eduard Inglés Stage Manager Whitney McNamara Deputy Stage Manager Marina Milankovic Assistant Stage Manager Geetanjali Mishra MUSIC STAFF Repetiteurs Phoebe Briggs, Phillipa Safey ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Surtitles courtesy of Opera Australia ResolutionX, BAACLight Theatre, Lilydale Theatre Company © Anna Cordingley, Costume Designer P. 4 VICTORIAN OPERA 2020 SALOME ORCHESTRA CONCERTMASTER Sarah Cuming HORN Yi Wang * Philippa Gardner Section Principal Jasen Moulton VIOLIN Tania Hardy-Smith Chair supported by Mr Robert Albert Principal
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English Translation of the German by Tom Hammond
Richard Strauss Susan Bullock Sally Burgess John Graham-Hall John Wegner Philharmonia Orchestra Sir Charles Mackerras CHAN 3157(2) (1864 –1949) © Lebrecht Music & Arts Library Photo Music © Lebrecht Richard Strauss Salome Opera in one act Libretto by the composer after Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name, English translation of the German by Tom Hammond Richard Strauss 3 Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Judea John Graham-Hall tenor COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page Herodias, his wife Sally Burgess mezzo-soprano Salome, Herod’s stepdaughter Susan Bullock soprano Scene One Jokanaan (John the Baptist) John Wegner baritone 1 ‘How fair the royal Princess Salome looks tonight’ 2:43 [p. 94] Narraboth, Captain of the Guard Andrew Rees tenor Narraboth, Page, First Soldier, Second Soldier Herodias’s page Rebecca de Pont Davies mezzo-soprano 2 ‘After me shall come another’ 2:41 [p. 95] Jokanaan, Second Soldier, First Soldier, Cappadocian, Narraboth, Page First Jew Anton Rich tenor Second Jew Wynne Evans tenor Scene Two Third Jew Colin Judson tenor 3 ‘I will not stay there. I cannot stay there’ 2:09 [p. 96] Fourth Jew Alasdair Elliott tenor Salome, Page, Jokanaan Fifth Jew Jeremy White bass 4 ‘Who spoke then, who was that calling out?’ 3:51 [p. 96] First Nazarene Michael Druiett bass Salome, Second Soldier, Narraboth, Slave, First Soldier, Jokanaan, Page Second Nazarene Robert Parry tenor 5 ‘You will do this for me, Narraboth’ 3:21 [p. 98] First Soldier Graeme Broadbent bass Salome, Narraboth Second Soldier Alan Ewing bass Cappadocian Roger Begley bass Scene Three Slave Gerald Strainer tenor 6 ‘Where is he, he, whose sins are now without number?’ 5:07 [p.
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Richard Strauss's Ariadne Auf Naxos
Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos - A survey of the major recordings by Ralph Moore Ariadne auf Naxos is less frequently encountered on stage than Der Rosenkavalier or Salome, but it is something of favourite among those who fancy themselves connoisseurs, insofar as its plot revolves around a conceit typical of Hofmannsthal’s libretti, whereby two worlds clash: the merits of populist entertainment, personified by characters from the burlesque Commedia dell’arte tradition enacting Viennese operetta, are uneasily juxtaposed with the claims of high art to elevate and refine the observer as embodied in the opera seria to be performed by another company of singers, its plot derived from classical myth. The tale of Ariadne’s desertion by Theseus is performed in the second half of the evening and is in effect an opera within an opera. The fun starts when the major-domo conveys the instructions from “the richest man in Vienna” that in order to save time and avoid delaying the fireworks, both entertainments must be performed simultaneously. Both genres are parodied and a further contrast is made between Zerbinetta’s pragmatic attitude towards love and life and Ariadne’s morbid, death-oriented idealism – “Todgeweihtes Herz!”, Tristan und Isolde-style. Strauss’ scoring is interesting and innovative; the orchestra numbers only forty or so players: strings and brass are reduced to chamber-music scale and the orchestration heavily weighted towards woodwind and percussion, with the result that it is far less grand and Romantic in scale than is usual in Strauss and a peculiarly spare ad spiky mood frequently prevails.
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Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss Meister der Inszenierung Bearbeitet von Daniel Ender 1. Auflage 2014. Buch. 349 S. Hardcover ISBN 978 3 205 79550 6 Format (B x L): 13,5 x 21 cm Weitere Fachgebiete > Musik, Darstellende Künste, Film > Musikwissenschaft Allgemein > Einzelne Komponisten und Musiker Zu Inhaltsverzeichnis schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei Die Online-Fachbuchhandlung beck-shop.de ist spezialisiert auf Fachbücher, insbesondere Recht, Steuern und Wirtschaft. Im Sortiment finden Sie alle Medien (Bücher, Zeitschriften, CDs, eBooks, etc.) aller Verlage. Ergänzt wird das Programm durch Services wie Neuerscheinungsdienst oder Zusammenstellungen von Büchern zu Sonderpreisen. Der Shop führt mehr als 8 Millionen Produkte. Daniel Ender Richard Strauss Meister der Inszenierung BÖHLAU VERLAG WIEN · KÖLN · WEIMAR Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Umschlagabbildung: Richard Strauss, 1929 (© ullstein bild – Laszlo Willinger) © 2014 by Böhlau Verlag Ges.m.b.H & Co. KG, Wien Köln Weimar Wiesingerstraße 1, A-1010 Wien, www.boehlau-verlag.com Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Dieses Werk ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig. Umschlaggestaltung: Michael Haderer, Wien Layout: Bettina Waringer, Wien Korrektorat: Katharina Krones, Wien Druck und Bindung: CPI Moravia Gedruckt auf chlor- und säurefreiem Papier ISBN 978-3-205-79550-6 Inhalt Ein öffentliches Leben. Zur Einleitung Ein Kind seiner Zeit . 9 Die inszenierte Biographie . 18 Selbst- und Fremdbilder . 23 1. Vom Epigonen zum Genie „Ein sogenannter Charakter“. Umwelt und Familie. 33 „Nicht von hervorstechender Originalität“. Der Weg in die Öffentlichkeit . .42 „Zum Zukunftsmusiker gestempelt“.
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1 the Alps, Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony and Environmentalism
Note: This is an expanded version of an article appearing in the journal Green Letters (2011); it is intended for a literary rather than musical readership, and the punctuation and spellings are British. The Alps, Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony and Environmentalism By Brooks Toliver Introduction After love and death, nature may well be European music’s preferred theme; it figures significantly in troubadour cansos, pastoral madrigals and operas, tone poems, impressionistic preludes, and elsewhere. In light of this it is puzzling how seldom actual nature is invoked in musical discourse. Composers—Richard Strauss among them—have been known to seek out nature in the manner of landscape painters, but there is no similar tradition among the critics, who ground nature-music and their judgments of it not in nature but in other music and criticism. When confronted with the vivid imagery of Strauss’s Alpine Symphony (1915), contemporaries wrote primarily of the aesthetics of vivid imagery, relegating the images themselves to the level of anecdote. Musicologists are quite adept at exploring the relationship of works to cultural constructions of nature, but relatively few have brought real environments into the discussion of canonical music. There has as yet been no serious consideration of how the Alps might be critical to an appreciation of the Alpine Symphony, nor has anyone theorized what the consequences of the Alpine Symphony might be for the Alps. Surely it is worth asking whether it metaphorically embodies sustaining or destructive relationships to the environment it represents, if it respects or disrespects nonhuman nature, and if love of nature is contingent on a symbolic domination of it, to name just three questions.
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May, 2020 No. 1941 Subscription (Program B) Richard Strauss
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Interpreting Race and Difference in the Operas of Richard Strauss By
Interpreting Race and Difference in the Operas of Richard Strauss by Patricia Josette Prokert A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Music: Musicology) in the University of Michigan 2020 Doctoral Committee: Professor Jane F. Fulcher, Co-Chair Professor Jason D. Geary, Co-Chair, University of Maryland School of Music Professor Charles H. Garrett Professor Patricia Hall Assistant Professor Kira Thurman Patricia Josette Prokert [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4891-5459 © Patricia Josette Prokert 2020 Dedication For my family, three down and done. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my family― my mother, Dev Jeet Kaur Moss, my aunt, Josette Collins, my sister, Lura Feeney, and the kiddos, Aria, Kendrick, Elijah, and Wyatt―for their unwavering support and encouragement throughout my educational journey. Without their love and assistance, I would not have come so far. I am equally indebted to my husband, Martin Prokert, for his emotional and technical support, advice, and his invaluable help with translations. I would also like to thank my doctorial committee, especially Drs. Jane Fulcher and Jason Geary, for their guidance throughout this project. Beyond my committee, I have received guidance and support from many of my colleagues at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance. Without assistance from Sarah Suhadolnik, Elizabeth Scruggs, and Joy Johnson, I would not be here to complete this dissertation. In the course of completing this degree and finishing this dissertation, I have benefitted from the advice and valuable perspective of several colleagues including Sarah Suhadolnik, Anne Heminger, Meredith Juergens, and Andrew Kohler.
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PROGRAM NOTES Richard Strauss Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59
PROGRAM NOTES by Phillip Huscher Richard Strauss Born June 11, 1864, Munich, Germany. Died September 8, 1949, Garmisch, Germany. Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59 Strauss began his opera Der Rosenkavalier, a “comedy for music” on a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, in 1909 and completed it on September 26, 1910. The premiere was given on January 26, 1911, at the Dresden Court Opera. The orchestral suite was first performed on October 5, 1944, in New York, under Artur Rodzinski, who is traditionally credited as its arranger. The score calls for three flutes and piccolo, three oboes and english horn, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, ratchet, cymbal, bass drum, celesta, two harps, and strings. Performance time is approximately twenty-four minutes. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first subscription concert performances music from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (a suite of waltzes) were given at Orchestra Hall on December 1 and 2, 1911, with Frederick Stock conducting. Our most recent subscription concert performances (a suite from the opera) were given on December 20, 21, and 22, 2007, with Ludovic Morlot conducting. The Orchestra first performed music from the opera (a suite of waltzes) at the Ravinia Festival on July 31, 1936, with Werner Janssen conducting, and most recently (the act 3 trio and finale with Renée Fleming, Heidi Grant Murphy, and Susan Graham) on July 31, 2004, with Christoph Eschenbach conducting. Salome made Richard Strauss the most famous composer alive. It also made him rich.
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Elektra 2017
B Y L ARRY R OTHE igmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung approached the wronged must exact vengeance. Now, just as her mother human mind as a museum. They toured patients’ avenged the young Iphigenia, Elektra seeks revenge for her Sinner galleries, focusing on the permanent collec - father’s death. His killers must die. Sophocles captures all tions. What a show the princess Elektra would have offered, a this in a story of corrosive sorrow. Hofmannsthal chose not display so disturbing that it gave birth to a psychoanalytical the - to mention Iphigenia in his version of the legend, thus eras - ory. Jung coined the term “Electra complex” in 1913, ten years ing sympathy for Klytemnestra. His queen is no grieving after the Austrian poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote his play mother. She is a self-centered adulteress who wants her hus - Elektra, based on Sophocles’ classic drama, and four years after band gone. His murder drives Elektra to the edge of insanity. Richard Strauss transformed Hofmannsthal’s play into his most When Strauss saw Hofmannsthal’s Elektra in 1905, he musically daring opera. For Hofmannsthal, the character of knew it could become an opera, yet he balked at the subject, Elektra (to use the German spelling) must have exercised a worried that it too closely resembled his last stage work, powerful appeal, for she embodied the fevers and perfumes of Salome . That story, drawn from the Bible and thus also set in fin-de-siècle art. As drawn to interiors as were Freud and Jung, antiquity, capitalized on flamboyance. The nymphet of the Hofmannsthal saw opportunity in Elektra—the opportunity to title teases her stepfather, King Herod, with a flood of adoles - depict a tortured mind, to open the doors to her inner museum.
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Introduction
Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-45659-3 - Rounding Wagner’s Mountain: Richard Strauss and Modern German Opera Bryan Gilliam Excerpt More information Introduction Chapter 1 suggests that, despite its obscurity, Guntram (1893) remains the central source for understanding the emergence of Strauss as a mature artist. The work, whose text was written by the composer, documents his early philosophical struggles with the issue of music and metaphysics. Earlier scholars of Strauss’s operatic oeuvre have explained its failure in terms of its miscarried Wagnerism, demonstrating that they themselves have failed to understand that Guntram ultimately rejects Wagnerian metaphysics. In 1949, at the end of his life, Strauss regretted that his biographers tended to downplay Guntram’s rejection of a Wagnerian Erlösung, thereby ignoring the breach between individual (subject) and the world (object), as the Minnesänger breaks his lyre and walks 1 away from his brotherhood and his beloved Freihild. In this single gesture, Strauss, who served as his own librettist on this work, suggests that if one systematically follows Schopenhauer to the end of his four-book World as Will and Representation,theﬁnal denial of the will must include a rejection of music. Feuersnot (1901), the co-subject, along with Salome, of Chapter 2, marked the end of a seven-year operatic hiatus in the wake of Guntram’s failure. During those years Strauss composed his mature tone poems, all of which exemplify a shift toward ego assertion foreshadowed by that breach between individual and collective treated in Guntram. Informed by Nietzsche and Stirner, these orchestral works feature an individual (whether the visionary hero of Ein Heldenleben or the delusional antihero of Don Quixote) at odds with a complacent society.
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Art Song Repertoire List
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Aegyptiaca 3 (2018) Mnemohistory and Cultural Memory
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