Broadcasts from the Lyric Opera of Chicago continue on Classical 90.5 at noon this Saturday, May 23, with a performance of Capriccio by Richard Strauss, set to a libretto by the composer and (primarily) Clemens Kruass. The performance will be sung in German and will run approximately three hours. Sir Andrew Davis conducts.
Capriccio, Strauss's final opera, was meant to appeal only to the connoisseur, which it does with great success. Clemens Krauss' brilliant libretto, made to order for the composer's talents and concerns, explores the relationship of the artist with his art. The story's protagonist, the Countess (sung by renowned soprano Renee Fleming), inspires a passionate discussion about opera's oldest question: what comes first - the words or the music? As a retrospective on Strauss's life work, Capriccio shows him drawn back more and more not only into the preceding century (whose ideals had nurtured him) but to the age of Mozart, whose operas he had championed as a conductor in Berlin and Vienna. Though Strauss wrote other valedictories, notably his Metamorphosen for strings and his Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra, Capriccio was his farewell to the stage, not by coincidence but by intent.
CAST
Countess: Renée Fleming
Clairon: Anne Sofie von Otter
Count: Bo Skovhus
Flamand: William Burden
Olivier: Audun Iversen
La Roche: Peter Rose
By submitting your comments, you hereby give AZPM the right to post your comments and potentially use them in any other form of media operated by this institution.