Thursday, December 3, 2015

Richard Strauss Salome French version on Spotify

In 1902, Claude Debussy wrote an opera, that would revolutionize the way composers would treat the genre: Pelléas et Mélisande. One of the innovations was that, in stead of the centuries long tradition of hiring a librettist to adapt the text, Debussy chose to set the text directly, making only a number of cuts. Richard Strauss was influenced by Debussy’s opera, when he wrote his own masterpiece “Salomé”. He also directly adopted the tekst from a play, aulthough through a somewhat strange international detour: Hedwig Lachmann’s German adaptation of the original French text by British writer Oscar Wilde…
By 1907, Salomé was so popular (and even recorded, I’ve added two 1907 fragments with Emma Destinn on the playlist) that Strauss decided to make a reworking, with the original French text by Oscar Wilde as basis. Vocal lines and orchestration were arranged, making the work much more transparant and remarkably closer in sound the the original model of this work, Pelléas et Mélisande. 
The recording I’ve chosen was recorded in 2007 at the Valle d’Itria Summer Festival on the 100th anniversary of the first staging. The Italian forces render a surprising idiomatic performance, sensual and with a dark and vibrant Salomé sung by Sofia Soloviy. Admittedly, the first three tracks of this live recording sound a bit rough, but with the first big scene with Iokanaan this performance really takes of, helped by the vivid and lucid conducting by Massimiliano Caldi,. 


Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Salomé, Opera op 54

Sofia Soloviy (Salome)
Costantino Finucci (Iokanaan)
Leonardo Gramegna (Herod Antipas)
Francesca Scaini (Herodias)
Vincenzo Maria Sarinelli (Narraboth)
Francesca De Giorgi (The Page of Herodias)
Michele Aurelio Bruno (A Cappadocian)
Giuseppe Ranoia (First Soldier)
Marcello Rosiello (Second Soldier)
Nicola Amodio, Massimiliano Silvestri
Domingo Stasi, Giovanni Coletta
Michele Aurelio Bruno (Five Jews)
Emanuele Genovese
Giuseppe Ranoia (Two Nazarenes) 
Nicola Amodio (A slave)

Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia
Massimiliano Caldi, conductor
Live 2007 

A 100 years earlier…
-Jochanaan, ich bin verliebt in deinen Leib
-Dein Haar ist grässlich 

Emmy Destinn, soprano
Orchestra
Bruno Seidler-Winkler, conductor
Recorded 1907





https://open.spotify.com/user/otterhouse/playlist/2shkwQT7XAFYJEHoI96dIR
(HTTP link)

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