The highlight of the season of the Genoese theater was the staging of die Liebe der Danae, proposal of the greatest interest due to the fact that these are the first performances in Italy in the original german language of a masterpiece of which only one edition in Italian is remembered, dated December 8, 1952, conducted by Clemens Krauss.

Penultimate opera of Richard Strauss, the work has had a series of vicissitudes that have made its staging difficult since its creation. Although the composition was completed in June 1940, due to the Second World War and events related to the history of the Third Reich, the work had its public performance only on August 14, 1952, almost three years after the death of Strauss himself. However, despite the closure of all theatres decreed by Goebbels, on 16 August 1944, a dress rehearsal of the opera took place in Salzburg, conducted by Clemens Krauss, in the presence of very few guests and the composer himself, who at the end of the performance, with tears in his eyes and a voice broken by emotion, addressed the orchestra saying “’Perhaps we shall meet again in a better world’.

The beautiful Genoese staging begins precisely from this episode; with the curtain still closed we see Richard Strauss and his wife Pauline wandering around the stalls, overlooking the mystical gulf, while from the original footage we hear the composer’s moving words, followed by images of war and destruction.

Die Liebe der Danae, is inspired by a work from 1920 by the great Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannstahl, “Danae, or The Marriage of Convenience”; the collaboration between Strauss and Hofmannstahl has produced some of the greatest operatic masterpieces of the twentieth century such as Elektra and “der Rosenkavalier”; the libretto was elaborated by Joseph Gregor, austrian historian and playwrite . Like many of Strauss’s works, the opera is inspired by mythology, as the musician’s ambition was to achieve a synthesis between the grandeur of the classical world and that of German music: from the barbaric and pre-Homeric Greece of Strauss’s Elektra, passing through the neoclassical and Winkelmanian Hellas of Ariadne auf Naxos, intertwined with the masks of the commedia dell’arte.

In Strauss’s penultimate opera, two myths merge, unrelated to each other, which years after the silver rose find their point of contact in the most precious gold metal: the myth of the beautiful Danae, seduced by Zeus who takes the form of a shower of gold, and that of Midas, king of Lydia, who turns everything he touches into gold. The opera unfolds in three acts, between myth and comedy, as per the libretto that defines it as “Heitere Mythologie” (happy mythology), in narrating the loves of the beautiful Danae, daughter of the indebted king Pollux, torn between the promises of wealth of the god Jupiter and the sincere love of Midas, once a donkey herder. Danae will choose poor but sincere love, and in the last act Jupiter will painfully acknowledge this choice in a farewell that recalls that of Wotan to his rebellious daughter Brünnhilde. In Laurence Dale’s beautiful directorial reading, the figures of Jupiter and Richard Strauss overlap, and in the thord act, on the stage the two couples of Jupiter and Danae and Richard and Pauline move almost mirror-like, while in the background flow original black and white footage of the old
Strauss in the beloved and dreamed villa of Garmisch. The rest of the staging also moves in the two temporal planes of the myth and of Austria felix, with scenes of grand balls that echoed to the Sissi era, references to Greek architecture and gold-covered mimes that reproduce the passions and expectations of the protagonists.

From a musical point of view, the theatre fields a cast of more than excellent performers. Above all, Angela Meade’s Danae, who provides a performance and interpretation of stratospheric level. Meade, a favourite of the Carlo Felice, where she triumphed in the great belcanto roles, such as Anna Bolena and Beatrice di Tenda, reveals herself with this performance as one of the greatest Straussian interpreter of the current operatic panorama. The power of her voice, which emerges without any difficulty above the magma of sound of Strauss’s great orchestra, is combined with a silvery timbre and a cantability that adapt perfectly to the soprano vocal register favoured by the Bavarian composer. Also worthy of praise is the ease with which her voice bends to pianissimo, such as the one that closes the opera “Siehe: ich liebe”, resolved in a
masterly manner. It is to be hoped that the artistic directors of the theatres take note of this interpretation and cast her as Ariadne and even as Kaiserin.

The rest of the cast is of the highest level: in the part of Jupiter, the Texan baritone Scott Hendricks, grappling with one of the most arduous roles of repertoire: although the singer sometimes succumbs to the great Struassian orchestra, he succeeds in managing to portray the character with inspired phrasing and great stage presence.

John Matthew Myers’ Midas is excellent; Strauss did not like the tenor voice and very often wrote roles that were at the limit of performability, as for the Italian singer of Rosenkavalier. Myers faces the terrible tessitura without any effort, and with timbre and a declamation perfectly at ease with the difficult writing.

In his case too, we hope to see him soon in the role of Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos. Vocally and scenically, the other two tenors are also excellent, Timothy Oliver, in the role of the god Merkur, and Tuomas Katajala, who tries his hand at the caricatural role of King Pollux. A special mention goes to the four ladies, also seduced and abandoned by the god of seduction Jupiter, who, in beautiful evening dresses, embroider with beautiful voices the sensuality and refinement of Strauss‘ writing: the performances of Anna Graf as Semele, Agnieszka Adamczak as Europa, Hagar Sharvit as Alkmene and Valentina Stadler as Leda are of great visual and vocal impact.
Really good conducting by Austrian conductor Michael Zlabinger, who took over from the expected Fabio Luisi. The sound that the conductor manages to obtain from the excellent orchestra highlights all the beauty and the timbre blends of Strauss’s orchestration, with a particularly successful play of colors and dynamics, both in the accompaniment of the singers and in the beautiful interludes. The performance of the Choir was also of a high level, during the long and difficult parts in the first and third acts.

At the end of the show, convinced applause from the audience, who came from all over northern Italy, for a very successful show and authentic ovations for the top-class performance of Angela Meade. A further demonstration that by focusing on the quality of the performances, theaters can go beyond the traditional repertoire and offer the public successful and culturally relevant evenings.

CAST

Jupiter
Scott Hendricks
Merkur
Timothy Oliver
Pollux
Tuomas Katajala
Danae
Angela Meade

Xanthe
Valentina Farcas
Midas
John Matthew Myers
Erste König
Albert Memeti
Zweite König
Eamonn Mulhall
Dritte König
Nicolas Legoux
Vierte König
John Paul Huckle
Semele
Anna Graf
Europa
Agnieszka Adamczak
Alkmene
Hagar Sharvit
Leda
Valentina Stadler
Vier Wächter
Domenico Apollonio

Conductor
Michael Zlabinger
Director
Laurence Dale
Scenes and costumes
Gary McCann
Lighting

John Bishop

Choreographer and assistant director
Carmine De Amicis