Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
GOOD MODERN SOUND, BUT NOT THE BEST DAPHNE, 26 Oct 2005
Strauss operas after Rosenkavalier tend to be lumped together and then dismissed as demonstrating a falling off in quality and interest. Partial exceptions are made for Ariadne and Arabella: more recently Die Frau ohne Schatten and Capriccio have started knocking on the door of the repertory. As for the rest; hardly worth the bother for their few crumbs of lyrical pleasure, seems to be the common view.
In fact, they are a very varied and often rewarding bunch - from the highly autobiographical Intermezzo through the knockabout comedy of Schweigsame Frau (with a sextet to rival the Rosenkavalier Trio) and the anti-war Friedenstag to the picturesque lyricism of Helena and Danae (great Strauss soprano arias in both).
Daphne is probably closest to the last two, based as it is on Classical mythology. But this is Strauss in pastoral mood with bucolic oboes and flutes to the fore - a kind of Germanic VW with Alphorns - though later, when Apollo reveals himself as a god, the full Straussian orchestral palette is let rip. It is also a pastoral counterpart to Elektra - a one acter of around an hour and a half. It even starts in a similar way: after the wonderful woodwind prelude the shepherds chatter as the maids do in the earlier opera before the title-heroine has a big lyrical aria in which we discover just what drives her.
The name-part dominates this opera and it is packed with all Strauss's familiar genius for writing glorious lyrical lines for the soprano voice. Renee Fleming fills the part with her rich, full tone. BUT, and it's a big 'but', I think she actually overfills it. I'm not convinced this is the right voice for the part. For me, Daphne demands a Sophie voice, rather than a Marschallin or even a Kaiserin voice. As Strauss writes her, she is a teenager, an adolescent who is put off by the pushy advances of Leukippos and frightened by her own rush of hormonal feelings as she falls into the arms of the charismatic Apollo. The tessitura of the part, especially in the latter stages, is cruelly high. Even Lucia Popp (under Haitink) struggles and sounds a bit strained. For ideal Daphnes you have to go further back - to Maria Reining in 1944 or especially to Hilde Gueden, both under the conductor of the premiere, Karl Bohm.
The Gueden performance on DGG also benefits from the best tenor performance on any of these recordings - Fritz Wunderlich as Leukippos. Why was it that Strauss never succeeded in doing for his big tenor parts (Bacchus, Menelaus, Henry, etc.) what he did for his sopranos? Must have been to do with marrying one! Both tenor parts in Daphne are fairly unrewarding and, while the tenors on the new disc (Botha and Schade) do their best, it is to Wunderlich (and indeed James King as Apollo) on the DGG discs that you must turn for the most rewarding performances. The bass and alto parents have fared better on disc and Youn and Larsson are good (Larsson copes well with the very low alto writing for Gaea), but Schoffler and Little (DGG again) are better.
What really does score in this new recording's favour is the sound. Bohm/Reining in '44 sounds its age: DGG in '64 was good for a live recording of its period: Haitink twenty years later sounds a bit boxy for its period. The new version with Bychkov's passionate and committed conducting makes glorious sounds (though a little lacking in perspective at times), especially in Strauss's magical orchestration of the heroine's final transformation into a tree.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As Close to Perfection As This Life Allows, 11 Jan 2009
It's difficult to add to the detailed analysis of the earlier review here, except in the conclusions drawn, an area in which taste must inevitably supervene. I acknowledge the difficulty most people, even Strauss enthusiasts, have with his later operas, but the pleasure derivable from overcoming this difficulty can be truly wonderful. My previous experience has only been with the Haitink/Popp version, and I was there able to derive little of the magic of the music that swells in its rich profusion from Renée Fleming and Semyon Bychkov. For me, the affinity Strauss had with the soprano voice relates so much better to the rich maturity of Fleming than to Popp's lighter voice, and I was thrilled by this recording. The sound quality here is, for me at least, exactly what I seek in Strauss' music: a buoyancy of spirit and an infinite depth that has been achieved by so few others. It may be possible to better this recording, but as I write those words I envisage a paradise more celestial than I have yet experienced.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Daft title (Daphne) belies another great Strauss opera, 8 Mar 2009
This neglected Strauss opera is a missing gem in the Strauss repertoire. While understandably ignored by opera cognoscenti who see nothing new from Strauss in this opera and consider it below more interesting earlier works, for Strauss lovers (not the unlikeable person, just his music) we can't get too much of a great composer.
About the performance, Renee Fleming & Michael Schade blend perfectly in a typically difficult Strauss scoring for 2 soli (really just Renee Fleming). Bychkov keeps a(n also typically) noisy orchestral score under control.
Wilson, 7-8-09
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