Soprano Meagan Miller, slated to appear in our “A Very Good Year – Happy Birthday to 1912” concert, is to be a lead in the performance of Richard Strauss’s Die Liebe der Danae at Bard in a few days. The New York Times ran an interesting article about this today.
A quote from the article:
Now that the cult of modernism has subsided, Strauss and Sibelius have been thoroughly rehabilitated. Encountering a Strauss opera written after “Der Rosenkavalier” is no longer a special event, and today “Ariadne auf Naxos,” “Die Frau Ohne Schatten,” “Arabella” and “Capriccio” are all repertory pieces, while “Intermezzo, ” “Die Ägyptische Helena,” “Daphne” and “Die Schweigsame Frau” appear with increasing frequency. Several other Strauss operas, early and late, are likely to remain on the periphery, but “Die Liebe der Danae,” to judge from the growing number of productions in Europe and the appearances of new recordings, may yet emerge from the shadows.
If it does, SummerScape’s music director, Leon Botstein, Bard’s longtime president, can claim a share of the credit. In 2000 Mr. Botstein presented a concert version of “Die Liebe der Danae” in New York with the American Symphony Orchestra, which was later released on Telarc CDs, and he is conducting the five performances at Bard, staged by Kevin Newbury with the soprano Meagan Miller in the title role.