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Ponchielli - La Gioconda / Fischer, Sanjust, Wiener Staatsoper
: :The Vienna State Opera's 1986 production of La Gioconda, Amilcare Ponchielli's only lasting success, was an increasingly rare event. The story--based on a long forgotten Victor Hugo drama--is an emotional roller coaster of high passion and self-sacrifice, but has fallen out of favor with the major international opera companies; instead, Ponchielli's contemporary Verdi and one-time pupil Puccini are today's guaranteed crowd-pullers. This is a shame. Ponchielli's score might be sumptuous to the point of occasional over-ripeness but it contains some marvelous arias, not least Enzo's 'Cielo e mar.' And whenever La Gioconda herself ...
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Richard Strauss - Elektra / Claudio Abbado, Wiener Staatsoper
: :There is a special category of German opera--we might call it the repellent masterpiece--in which some works of Richard Strauss are prominent, and Elektra is perhaps the pinnacle, certainly a unique experience. This production fulfills all the opera's requirements for mastery and repulsion. Opera frequently deals with dysfunctional families, but the clan of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Elektra, and Orestes stands out even when compared with those of Oedipus or Medea. Deep, burning hatred, a thirst for revenge, a violent distaste for one's nearest and dearest are the driving forces in this work, which is ...
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Mozart - Le Nozze Di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) / Abbado, Vienna State Opera
: :There is a special category of German opera--we might call it the repellent masterpiece--in which some works of Richard Strauss are prominent, and Elektra is perhaps the pinnacle, certainly a unique experience. This production fulfills all the opera's requirements for mastery and repulsion. Opera frequently deals with dysfunctional families, but the clan of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Elektra, and Orestes stands out even when compared with those of Oedipus or Medea. Deep, burning hatred, a thirst for revenge, a violent distaste for one's nearest and dearest are the driving forces in this work, which is ...
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