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…]
“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.