Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten (Aix-en-Provence, 2026)

Richard Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten

Festival d'Aix-en Provence, 2026

Klaus Mäkelä, Barrie Kosky, Michael Spyres, Vida Miknevičiūtė, Nina Stemme, Brian Mulligan, Ambur Braid, Jean-Sébastien Bou, Tomasz Kumięga, Daniel Miroslaw, Robert Lewis, Ella Taylor, Héloïse Mas, Laurence Pouderoux, Eugénie Lefebvre, Laura Jarrell

ARTE Concert - 9th July 2026

Die Frau ohne Schatten is one of the most darkly enigmatic of all opera works, shrouded in ominous metaphors with uncommon mythical imagery and obscure meaning. Composed between 1914 and 1917, it's above all a product of its time, Richard Strauss and his librettist, the poet Hugo von Hofmannstahl, grappling with the industrialisation of war and a time of social upheaval; dealing with a modern era of new philosophical thinking and artistic expression in their Viennese society and trying to find a new way of expressing all that in theatrical and musical terms. 

Restaging the opera and working out how much to adhere to its original stage directions in order to retain the underlying purpose of the work is up for grabs and evidently it inspires many impressive interpretations and re-imaginings. Above all of course the work has a tremendous inner power of its own that never fails to put across. Giving the work to a director like Barrie Kosky to direct at the Aix-en-Provence Festival is therefore an intriguing proposition.

Behind all the fairy tale imagery and obscure symbolism there is at least one clear theme that runs through the work. The Woman without a Shadow is clearly stated as a metaphor for the infertility of the Empress, who since she is unable to conceive a child, her husband the Emperor will turn into stone. Christof Loy’s astonishing "literal" 2011 Salzburg Festival reproduction of the 1955 Vienna recording of this opera by Karl Böhm managed to tease out a deeply moving reflection on all the unborn children of those who died in the war. Or as the Aix programme notes succinctly describe the theme of the opera in a wider context, it's a question of "what is the essence of humanity and why should it be perpetuated?"

It's also notable of course that there is a clear distinction drawn between the Emperor of a mythical realm's desire for a successor and the human world of Barak the Dyer and his wife's choice to bring children into the world under rather more difficult conditions. The work captures the human tenderness in the pain of living for both these couples and Strauss’s music gets to the heart of it with beautiful lyricism and with the emotional and psychological depth that Hofmannstahl pours imaginatively into the fable. The other interpretation - or an additional one on top of that one - is that the shadow represents the conscience and the danger of those who act and rule without the basic human quality of having a conscience. But essentially whichever way you look at it, it's about defining humanity and its potential for turning towards destruction and self-destruction and the consequences of which are made quite clear at the end of the second Act.

The opening of the third Act III consequently hits hard, all the more so in this production due to the exceptional singing of Brian Mulligan as Barak and Ambur Braid as his wife. Kosky however gives them the ideal platform: a completely white box, the lighting such indeed that there is almost no trace of any shadows (it's the first time I've ever seen Die Frau ohne Schatten where the stage lighting does actually make the shadows disappear); just the hint of reflection but no shadow. Husband and wife wander in space, blind to each other, the effect almost overwhelming as the intent of this elaborately arranged and conceived work is indeed supposed to be. The subsequent scene between the Empress and the Nurse in the subsequent scene in the box no less effective, again the singing expressing everything, Vida Miknevičiūtė as the Empress in particular stunning in her delivery, the killing of her nurse played by Nina Stemme coming as quite a shock on top of that. In a work filled with symbolism like this, the director is free to let their own imagination run riot to serve the imagery and intent and Kosky obliges right up to a suitably enigmatic ending.

The work contains all the ingredients to impress and touch deeply. There is a contrast and dynamic between the two worlds that is brought out as much by the singing as the score and libretto, making it feel vital, real and alive. As noted above, both Vida Miknevičiūtė and Canadian soprano Ambur Braid are both superb here. Typically for Strauss the vocal challenges are considerable for the female roles, but the emotional journey is also critical and both handle it impressively. Brian Mulligan as Barak is also outstanding, looking and sounding like he is having a deep crisis and emotional breakdown at times, but his singing is assured and controlled. Once an Empress herself, Nina Stemme's experience with this opera brings additional depth to the role of the Nurse and she still sings and performs to a very high standard. There really is no other standard that will do in this opera for any of the main roles. Michael Spyres has recently been taking on heavier roles like this and his voice, a little deeper now, is ideal and as golden as ever, but doesn't seem to establish a sense of character or even real menace as the Emperor.

With voices of that quality to work with, Barrie Kosky likewise tones down his usual excesses when presented with an opera of rich excess. Can you do a minimalist Die Frau ohne Schatten? Would you even want to? Would you ever expect Barrie Kosky to deliver a minimalist production? And yet, the director finds the right balance here, seeking to delve deeper into the meaning and the human above the spectacle and glamour, allowing flashes of wonder at the dream of other possibilities in a world yet to be born, but making sure that the reality always intrudes. The music does exactly the same. There is a distinction between the grubby ramshackle tower of the Dyer and the sterile, cold and lifeless world of the Emperor. Sterile and lifeless provide the appropriate imagery that works much better here rather than place of magical fantasy and wonder. The fantastical touches when they are used - a giant rocking chair with blades for rockers, the headless messengers of Keikobad, and a glittering golden dancer - are original and strikingly effective.

While individual scenes are impressive, well imagined, visually effective and sung and acted as well as they can be, the challenges of bringing it all into a coherent drama remain. Does Die Frau ohne Schatten really have any deeper meaning, or is it enough to be a broad meditation on birth and existence? There are many other little observations and truths broached here, but it's difficult to see them adding up to something greater. Perhaps it's the fact that it can't be easily pinned down that makes it a great work, one that allows new teams to bring a new vision and new ideas. What is clear is that this production is a fabulous account of an endlessly fascinating opera, and you can't complain about that. With Klaus Mäkelä taking on a considerable challenge for his first new opera production for Aix-en-Provence, the score is explored across its whole range of expression and never less than overwhelming on a deep emotional level. Rather than seek to illuminate or explain its mysteries, Kosky and Mäkelä suggest that Die Frau ohne Schatten is perhaps simpler in its meaning and message than the elaborate scenario suggests.

External links: ARTE Concert, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, La Scène Numérique du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Beethoven - Fidelio (Dublin, 2021)

Ludwig van Beethoven - Fidelio

Irish National Opera, 2021

Fergus Sheil, Annabelle Comyn, Sinéad Campbell Wallace, Robert Murray, Daniel Sumegi, Brian Mulligan, Kelli-Ann Masterson, Dean Power, David Howes, Jacek Wislocki, Matthew Mannion

The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin - 7th November 2021

Fidelio is very much an opera shaped by the time in which it was written and the difficulties the composer had in bringing it to the stage. The composition of Beethoven's only opera was a notoriously long and difficult process, going through several different versions and an ignominious debut in 1805 that was considered a failure. Little of those initial problems are evident now in whichever version is produced, whether as Fidelio or its earlier incarnation as Leonore. Its reputation as an opera relies on it being Beethoven's only opera to some extent, which is no small matter of course, but there are indisputably greater qualities evident in the work's themes. Those themes are related to the period when Vienna was occupied by French forces, but they can still have powerful resonance and meaning today if you can get over some of the work's problems. I don't think the Irish National Opera were entirely able to do that in their current production.

Fidelio is purest Beethoven, a composition that rates with the very best of his work, but the operatic conventions do age the work somewhat, and as opera was clearly not somewhere the composer was entirely comfortable, it doesn't really strike out any new or original ground. The libretto, one of the main problems with the composition that needing continuous rework and revision over its development, has some opera-comique elements and dry recitative that don't sit well alongside the rather more serious main subject, which is that of a story inspired by French Revolutionary ideals of a prisoner being held captive in secret and treated horrifically in captivity without trial.

There are ways to bring these two stories together. Evidently they are connected in the fact that the main character Fidelio - who is the object of the prison warder's daughter Marzelline's attentions, and consequently the love rival of Jaquino - is actually a woman, Leonore, the wife of the prisoner Florestan. She is seeking to find and rescue her husband from the prison, despite his existence and presence there not being recognised, as he is being kept there is secret as an act of personal revenge by Don Pizarro. With word of the prison governor due to visit, Pizarro wants to cover up his crimes by executing the prisoner being kept in the deepest darkest dungeon, the man already practically dead from starvation.

The element that notionally holds the two parts together in its original incarnation is the theme of married love; of a wife who will go to desperate lengths to save her husband from an unjust fate for the love that lies between them. There are of course many other aspects, both political and humanistic - and even proto-feminist - that can be drawn from this situation, from the tyranny of Pizarro's injustice and the determination of Florestan to suffer the consequences of his belief in truth and freedom, but the rather domestic and conventional rescue opera situations involving a woman disguised as a man leads to some forced comedy in the opening act that really does little for the work. If this were Mozart, those themes can feed though to a more rounded character development and expression of sentiments that deepens the themes. Here in Fidelio, it just seems conventional and perfunctory. 

Or at least in as far as you can ever find anything in Beethoven conventional or perfunctory. There is much to admire even in the opening scenes of the opera, which has some beautiful arias in there amidst the rather stiff recitative and the formality of the musical arrangements and romantic complications. If there is any real purpose to the opera revealed in these scenes aside from the consideration of what is important in a marriage and what is not (and a same-sex marriage would be one thing that would never have been considered in the original), it's in the way that the opera begins to really define what is and what is not important, establishing areas of light and shade, lightness and darkness, captivity and freedom, and viewing them as two sides of the same coin. Even behind the ordinary everyday matters there can be an underlying darkness. Fidelio's great achievement is in showing how even with that, hope can still exist and not be extinguished.

There are clear references to that in several scenes of the first act, not least in the brief release of the prisoner from their dark cells to spend a moment in the sunlight and fresh air. The prisoners chorus is simply a glorious moment, the gross inhumanity of what they have endured overshadowed/enlightened by a small act of kindness that means so much. It's a beautifully expressed sentiment and it is hope that holds it together; the belief and indeed even holding onto the memory that there is something better out there, something that it is not beyond reach.

Directing the Irish National Opera production Annabelle Comyn rightly focusses on light/dark and hope as being the humanistic heart of the work and its importance is no more clearly brought out than at the start of Act II. There is a noticeable shift in Beethoven's music, the heaviness that has been gradually alluded to now becoming inescapable as we are taken to the dark depths of the cell where Florestan is being detained, bound in chains, starving to death, about to be executed. All hope is almost snuffed out and yet we see the almost dead Florestan crawl towards a thin sliver of light that somehow manages to penetrate the utter darkness of this dank hole. It's chilling and a heart soaring moment at the same time.

The greatest expression of this human ability to endure and strive to hold onto hope and the fight for truth and justice is of course in the singing. In Florestan's voice we sense that purpose and determination, much as we have already seen it to a similar extent in the bravery of his wife Leonore's actions. It's interesting that the same qualities were evident in the performance of Satyagraha that I saw in London last week, about how it becomes possible not to submit to despair when you know you have truth and right on your side. Comparing Glass with Beethoven might raise eyebrows, but the same principle applies; the meaning and its ability to reach out to an audience is expressed through the music and through the human voice much more so than the dramatic presentation.

Fortunately, Beethoven's music - long laboured over to achieve just such an effect - and the performance of it under Fergus Sheil manage to get this across superbly at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on the opening night of this production. So too did the singing, with notably fine performances from Robert Murray as Florestan and Sinéad Campbell Wallace as Leonore. Kelli-Ann Masterson also stood out as Marzelline, but all the singing performances were excellent, finding the truth to their characters situation even if the libretto, the English translation of the recitative and the delivery of it left something to be desired.

This is something that the director never managed to get to grips with. The fact that the opera was sung in German and the recitative spoken in English wasn't really a problem, that was an easy enough switch to make. The way it was delivered however was completely lacking in any naturalistic intonation and it just contributed to the early scenes feeling inauthentic and lacking any real drama or emotion. The set designs didn't particularly help. They were basic and functional in the presentation of a relatively modern prison or containment facility - a computer screen, the prisoners wearing orange jumpsuits - but there could have been much more done to make this relatable and relevant to contemporary struggles for truth, freedom and justice.

Putting aside what it wasn't or what it maybe should have been, the little touches and emphases of light and dark were enough to win over an appreciative Dublin audience to the brilliance of Fidelio as an opera and highlight the important expression of humanistic qualities within it. If the production was lacking and didn't manage to address the dialogue/acting weaknesses that remain hazardous in this particular opera, the musical performances and the singing were nonetheless of the usual high standard we have come to expect from the Irish National Opera.

Links: Irish National Opera

Braunfels - Die Vögel

Walter Braunfels - Die Vögel

LA Opera, 2009

James Conlon, Darko Tresnjak, Desirée Rancatore, Brandon Jovanovich, James Johnson, Martin Gantner, Stacey Tappan, Brian Mulligan, Matthew Moore, Daniel Armstrong

Arthaus Musik

It’s interesting, although maybe not particularly useful, to speculate on the course that German opera might have taken were it not for the rise to power of the Nazi party, and were it not for the great suffering of two wars that would forever alter the course of history and society. In a more peaceful time, might not the influence of post-Wagner Romanticism and the ideals of German mythology have gained more of a foothold in the operatic music drama rather than being strangled at birth by the rather more harsh view of the reality of the world that would be reflected in the more discordant sounds of Berg, Schoenberg and Hindemith? Since many composers who might have had an influence during this period were lost to concentration camps or died during the conflicts, it is of course impossible to say, but it is surely possible to consider (or reconsider) the work of some of the composers who were able to continue writing – some indeed while imprisoned in a concentration camp – even if their work didn’t meet with the approval of the Nazi party and failed to achieve widespread recognition.

Much of that work has consequently languished in near-obscurity for decades as a reminder not just of what might have been in terms of German music history, but even as a reminder of the greater losses endured during those times, and it was with this in mind that the LA Opera launched their admirable Recovered Voices programme to rediscover some of the great “lost” works of composers like Viktor Ullmann, Alexander von Zemlinsky and Walter Braunfels. Braunfels, who had early on refused to write an anthem for Hitler’s Nazi party and was of Jewish heritage, was one of those who consequently did not find favour with new regime. His music falls most obviously into the post-Wagner category of mythological themes and neo-Romanticism, although I’m no expert. My only previous encounter with Braunfel’s work was in a recent 2012 radio broadcast of his extraordinary opera Verkündigung (‘The Annunciation’), its Christian mysticism theme and powerful leitmotifs reminiscent of Wagner’s Parsifal, but a wider view of the influences and Braunfel’s place within the progression of German music – up until that moment when the world forever changed – is more evident in his 1920 work Die Vögel.

Perhaps the most obvious reference point for Die Vögel (‘The Birds’) is Mozart’sThe Magic Flute (1791) – or perhaps it’s more of a starting point than a reference point, for while Die Vögel seems to incorporate themes from Mozart’s work, there are also references to other works in direct linear progression from that work, particularly with a fairytale element, in such notable works of German opera as Der Freischütz (1821), Siegfried (1876) and Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919) – all works incidentally where birds play a significant part in the mythology. It’s probably not a coincidence either than one is often reminded in this context – particularly in this colourful production at LA Opera – of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel (1906). Die Vögel (1920) is practically a summation of all those works, and if it doesn’t indicate any kind of progression upon the themes of those other great works, it is nonetheless beautifully written and there is interest in considering how those themes might relate to the time in which it was composed.

Based on the play by Aristophanes, there’s a great deal of allegorical potential within the epic fairytale drama of Die Vögel. Two men, Ratefreund (Loyal Friend) and Hoffegut (Good Hope) who between them and even within themselves symbolise the qualities and weaknesses within mankind, leave behind the world of men, seeking out Hoopoe, the once human Emperor of the birds. They propose the building of a grand city in the skies, a new domain in which the birds will reassert their power, grandeur and majesty as in times of old, escaping from the tyranny of man and the gods. If there’s a certain idealism evident in this theme, it’s also reflected in the music itself, which could be seen as looking backwards towards the models of former times, and in the musical and dramatic models (seria/buffa) that the two men themselves can be seen as representing – one of them idealistically poetic and serious, the other more practical-minded and comic.

If Act I of the opera is given over to the necessity of establishing the context of the drama and progressing it through Ratefreund’s actions, Act II seems to lose the dramatic drive in favour of musical reverie in Hoffegut’s love for the Nightingale, which is followed by in a ballet sequence of the marriage between Mister Pigeon and Miss Dove (yes, a ballet sequence – there aren’t many of those in 20th century opera) to celebrate the creation of a new kingdom of the skies. It all seems very academic, an occasion for Braunfels to demonstrate his considerable musical prowess, as well as expanding on the colour and variety of the work, and he does indeed do so beautifully. Despite appearances however, it is not at the cost the drama, and Braunfels has no compunction about breaking off the unfinished ballet when Prometheus turns up in the city with a warning about the fate of those who set themselves up to oppose the will of the gods.

While there may be metaphors that can be applied to the work (“where the small band together, they no longer fear the great”, the birds sing at one point in the Second Act), Braunfels doesn’t draw any specific parallels in the opera, which, for better or worse, comes across at times like an Ariadne auf Naxos without the self-conscious irony. LA Opera don’t seek to impose any reading either, preferring to focus on the colourful magical fairytale qualities of the work, leaving any interpretation to the viewer. The stage design by David P. Gordon is therefore simple yet brilliant, giving an impression of the spaciousness of the open skies with only a few touches of stylized coloured clouds and trees to the sides. Bold colours and lighting as well as some projections on the titled floor reflect atmospheric effects as well as the emotional content of the work, while bright colourful bird costumes evoke the ancient Greek drama as well as the fairytale elements. It looks marvelous and Darko Tresnjak’s stage direction makes the best use of it.

Directing the LA Opera orchestra, James Conlon brings out the precision and the richness of orchestration of Braunfel’s writing, with all its high Romantic influences. It’s even more of a joy to hear this rarely performed work sung so magnificently. There are some very demanding passages for the Zerbinetta/Queen of the Night-style role of the Nightingale that Désirée Rancatore navigates extremely well, only occasionally sounding a little bit harsh and strained. Brandon Jovanovich sings the Pamino/Bacchus-like role of Hoffegut wonderfully – lyrical but with the steel and clarity of a Heldentenor. James Johnson is a fine counterbalance to this in the Papageno-influenced role of Ratefreund, and Brian Mulligan’s deep baritone has a wonderful clarity and resonance in the role of Prometheus, but all the other roles were equally well sung and fitting with the characters. An absolute delight, there’s much to admire in Braunfel’s writing for Die Vögel, and this is a production that is worth coming back to for repeat viewing.

There is nice clarity and deep saturation to the wonderful colour schemes on the Blu-ray edition, but there are some movement issues with this particular release from Arthaus. It’s as if it were filmed in a different frame-rate and converted to 1080/60i. The detail and clarity is all there and I didn’t feel the movement issues were overly distracting, but it does tend to almost feel at times like there’s a slow-motion quality to movements. Audio tracks are PCM stereo and DTS HD-MA 5.1 and they give a wonderfully warm, full and clear account of the score and the singing. Optional subtitles are in German (matching the libretto), with English, French, Spanish and Italian options. The disc is BD25 and compatible for all regions.