by Jeremy Reynolds
At Severance Hall on Thursday, May 28 on a stage still covered in tarps to protect the artificial grass used in the production of Strauss’s Daphne (May 27 and 30), the Cleveland Orchestra gave a spirited performance of another of the canon’s great nature-inspired works: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral.” The second half of the program featured Richard Strauss’s Symphonia Domestica, Opus 53. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
“Daphne” means “Laurel” in Greek, and Ovid’s tale in Metamorphoses of how a river nymph came to be transmogrified into a sacred tree has all the elements that an opera composer could wish for: a sylvan setting, gods meddling in human affairs, passion versus purity, jealousy that leads to murder, a drunken orgy, and an ennobling ending. Jacopo Peri took on the story in 1597 (one of several operas he wrote, now mostly lost), as did Marco da Gagliano (1608), Heinrich Schütz (1627, his only opera, entirely lost), Alessandro Scarlatti (1700) and, most recently, Richard Strauss (1938). [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“Severance Hall is going to be turned into a picturesque landscape of nature,” said Julie Kim, director of operations for The Cleveland Orchestra, during a telephone conversation. The outdoors will be brought inside when Franz Welser-Möst leads a cast of internationally-renowned singers in a new production of Richard Strauss’s one-act opera, Daphne, on Wednesday, May 27 at 7:30 pm, and Saturday, May 30 at 8:00 pm.
Strauss described the opera as a “bucolic tragedy” which tells the story of a young woman who must choose between the love of men and her love for nature. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“Severance Hall is going to be turned into a picturesque landscape of nature,” said Julie Kim, director of operations for The Cleveland Orchestra, during a telephone conversation. The outdoors will be brought inside when Franz Welser-Möst leads a cast of internationally-renowned singers in a new production of Richard Strauss’s one-act opera, Daphne, on Wednesday, May 27 at 7:30 pm, and Saturday, May 30 at 8:00 pm.
In part one of this article, Emily MacDonald, who along with her husband, Cameron Jaye Mock, created the scenic, lighting, and projection design for the production, talked about the process they used in making stage director James Darrah’s vision for the opera sets a reality. In part two of this article, Julie Kim describes the role her department played in bringing the design team’s vision to reality. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On Wednesday, May 27 at 7:30 pm, and Saturday, May 30 at 8:00 pm at Severance Hall, Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and a cast of internationally-renowned singers in a new production of Richard Strauss’s one-act opera, Daphne.
Speaking from her dressing room at Severance Hall, the very friendly Nancy Maultsby said that she’s having a good time performing the role of Gaea. “This is my first time with this role, so I’m a newbie, but I’m having a lot of fun with it,” Maultsby said. “The role is very earthy.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Franz Welser-Möst returned to the Severance Hall podium on Thursday, May 14 to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a dynamic concert of music by Paul Hindemith, Jörg Widmann and Antonín Dvořák. Though the marketing department successfully advertised Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony as the main attraction (resulting in a large turnout for a Thursday evening), Christian Tetzlaff’s riveting performance of Widmann’s Violin Concerto was the most musically intriguing entry on the program, with The Orchestra’s reading of Hindemith’s Concert Music for Strings and Brass not far behind. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
An elemental legend set to music by an imaginative composer, and performed by an exacting conductor, a first-class orchestra, a responsive, adaptable chorus, and four veteran soloists made The Cleveland Orchestra’s performance of Hector Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust on Thursday evening, May 7 an unforgettable experience. May the houses for the two remaining concerts on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon be packed to the rafters — a concert this gripping happens only once in a great while. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Since launching his career by winning the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions in 1991, tenor Paul Groves has sung in a dizzying number of operas and logged a long list of concert performances around the world.
Groves returns to Cleveland this week to perform one of his signature roles, the title character in Hector Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust, a work he performed here in January of 2000 under Christoph von Dohnányi. Willard White, who was also featured in those performances, returns this weekend to recreate the role of Mephistopheles.
We caught up with the Lake Charles, Louisiana native at his hotel in Cleveland on Wednesday afternoon to ask him about his recent activities and his history with the Berlioz piece, in which, as one critic wrote, Groves “delivers the full range of Faust’s character from suicidal depression to ecstatic love” (Classics Today). [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
A full evening devoted to the music of Joseph Haydn is sure to be filled with sophisticated musical rhetoric, and at least a good handful of surprises. Last Thursday evening at Severance Hall, visiting British conductor Matthew Halls and The Cleveland Orchestra dug deeply into the fabric of an overture and a symphony, and with the help of the fastidiously exciting pianist Marc-André Hamelin, into one of the Austrian master’s piano concertos. Though the fourth work was obviously not by Haydn, its performance by duo hornists Richard King and Jesse McCormick would have deeply impressed whoever actually wrote it. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The legend of Dr. Faust — the world-weary scholar who makes a deal with the Devil to gain superhuman knowledge and powers — has fascinated writers since Christopher Marlowe made the story into a famous play in 1604. The tale became a rich source of inspiration to German composers as well, after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published the first part of his own enormous play, Faust, in 1808. Those composers included Liszt and Mahler, who based symphonic movements on Goethe’s final chorus, and Robert Schumann, who created his full-length oratorio Scenes from Goethe’s ‘Faust’ over a period of years.
This weekend, The Cleveland Orchestra will present three performances of Hector Berlioz’s imaginative version of the tale in the form of the oratorio (or is it an opera?) La Damnation de Faust. [Read more…]