Word: straussed
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...past decade, four of the most widely praised new Metropolitan Opera productions-Mozart's Don Giovanni, Berg's Wozzeck, Strauss's Salome and Die Frau ohne Schatten-all had one element in common: Conductor Karl Böhm. It was hardly coincidence. Long recognized as one of the world's foremost maestros, Böhm helped lead the way in elevating his profession to its rightfully high place in opera. Now 72, he dates his career back to the days when many opera houses did not even bother to list the conductor's name...
...some maestros seem intent on bending the score to fit their own interpretation, Böhm thinks of himself as the trustee of the composer, lets the music speak for itself. His attack is clean, crisp and controlled, and he adheres to the dictum of his close friend Richard Strauss: the basic duty of the opera conductor is to buoy up rather than drown out the singers. Böhm's stickwork, as spare and exacting as needlepoint, is also an inheritance from Strauss, who, to contain his enthusiasm, often conducted with his left hand in his pocket. Years...
Palace and hovel, ships, torches, caves, rocky passes, thunderstorms, primeval forest, a chorus of "unborn children." The whole idea for a new opera called Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow) so excited Richard Strauss that he wanted to be gin composing right on the spot. That was in 1911. It was eight years, however, before the shadow became a reality, and then, despite wide critical acclaim, it was 40 years more before it was staged in the U.S. Trouble was, with all those ships and rocky passes, the technical demands of the fanciful libretto were more than...
What saved the opera from its pretentious libretto was the soaring music of Strauss, conducted with thunderous brilliance by the late composer's gifted friend, Karl Bohm. By turns raging and receding, mischievous and mystical, the orchestration powerfully underscored the mysterious gulfs between the two worlds and buttressed each role with bold, contrasting shades of vocal writing. Big, robust, infinitely rich, Die Frau was symphonic opera music-and Metropolitan Opera-at its best...
Machine-Gunning the House. In the area of repertory, Bing's record at the old Met speaks for itself: 50 new productions, three U.S. premieres (Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Strauss's Arabella, Menotti's The Last Savage), and one world premiere (Barber's Vanessa). His own taste favors Italian opera; he is only lukewarm about Wagner and, with a few exceptions, indifferent to modern. Compared with Milan's La Scala or West Berlin's opera, whose repertories are laced with contemporary works, the Met, as one critic puts it, "remains...