Organization

Osterfestspiele Salzburg

Singer

Soprano

Renée Fleming

Arabella

Baritone

Thomas Hampson

Mandryka

Bass

Albert Dohmen

Count Waldner

Mezzo-soprano

Gabriela Beňačková

Adelaide

Hanna-Elisabeth Müller

Zdenka

Tenor

Daniel Behle

Matteo

Benjamin Bruns

Count Elemer

Derek Welton

Count Dominik

Steven Humes

Count Lamoral

Daniela Fally

The Fiakermilli

Jane Henschel

A fortune-teller

Conductor

Christian Thielemann

Stage director

Florentine Klepper

Costume designer

Anna Sofie Tuma

Set designer

Martina Segna

Orchestra

Staatskapelle Dresden

Salzburg

Austria

Großes Festspielhaus

"Arabella", the last collaboration between Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss, gives Christian Thielemann another opportunity to show his class as a Strauss specialist and to delight his audience conducting the Dresden Staatskapelle in his second season as Artistic Director of the Salzburg Easter Festival in the to ban. "The music is dreamily opulent," concluded the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).
Stimulated by the resounding success of "Der Rosenkavalier" a few years earlier, Strauss and Hofmannsthal have again placed the plot of the opera, which premiered in 1933 in the Dresden Semperoper, in Vienna. The sensitive handling of the director Florentine Kleppers with the characters in a fin-de-siècle set by Martina Segna and the elegant costumes by Anna Sofie Tuma offer almost ideal conditions for the brilliant vocal ensemble, in which Renée Fleming shines as Arabella with a unique character portrayal . "She is a real Straussin, as demonstrated on Saturday from start to finish of the performance in a master class in vocal style adapted to Strauss's music, which was simply amazing," read the leading Spanish daily El Pais, and the FAZ went into raptures: "But Renée Fleming has hardly entered the stage (...) as soon as she has started to sing, she radiates her very personal aura (...) The brightest, most comforting soprano heaven opens before us when Müller in the famous sisters' duet with Fleming". Hanna-Elisabeth Müller as "the intense Zdenka proved to be the highlight of the evening alongside the excellent Strauss sound of the orchestra," reported the Wiener Kurier. Thomas Hampson convinces as a "restrained, tender Mandryka" (opera glass) and together with Renée Fleming more than lives up to the description "vocal dream team" (orf.at).

Arabella Strauss,R

Approved

Photos