Happy returns: Dohnanyi’s back
mainAfter a year of sickness and an uncustomary walkout, Christoph von Donhanyi, 89, conducted a revival of Patrice Chereau’s Elektra production at La Scala this week.
Review here.
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Ricarda Merbeth as Elektra has to be a bad joke, no? She has what is known as a vocetta to begin with and then there are the horrendous intonation issues.
were you actually at the performance? if not, how can you make such judgements other than hearsay?
Hearsay is all he engages in.
“Purtroppo la densa scrittura straussiana – per pure logiche d’orchestrazione – in alcuni punti non lascia spazio al canto, impedendo alla voce di correre come dovrebbe e costringendo il cantante a uno sforzo gravoso.”
In other words, Merbeth is nowhere near being a dramatic soprano, by a distance of an ocean. And will never be. A travesty.
I attended splendid concert of La Scala orchestra week ago. Conductor young Lorenzo Vioti.
And let me guess, the climaxes never went farther than forte. At least, that’s what happened when his conducted “Frau ohne Schatten” in S.F. about 15 years ago. Who wants a chamber sounding version of “FroSch”?
Strauss himself said that Elektra should be conducted like Mendelssohn, like “Elfenmusik”.
. . . the score says something completely different. Take a look sometime. You don’t orchestrate like that if you want it to sound like Mendelssohn. Clearly, he was speaking out of his mouth, with the realization that the piece was way over-orchestrated.
Unfortunately maestro had to cancel second performance, replaced by Markus Stenz