R Strauss: Friedenstag

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Titulo: R Strauss: FriedenstagAutor: Richard StraussESTADO: BOM ESTADOISBN/EAN: 724355685025Editor: EMIAno: 1999Idioma: N.A.Encadernação: N.A.Páginas: N.A.Coleção: CD de MúsicaNº. da Coleção: N.A.Código de Controlo: CD17B Descrição: Premiered in 1939, Strauss's opera Friedenstag is his last major work to be recorded by a major label and, not coincidentally, the closest he came to socialist realism. The plot is so simple as to be virtually nonexistent: a 17th-century Catholic village under siege by Protestants is about to capitulate when help arrives. The libretto didn't exactly fire the composer's imagination, but he used a lot of Elektra-like unresolved dissonances to convey the cries of the starving populace and wrote his own version of Wagner's Siegfried-Brünnhilde love duets in the extended interplay between the Commandant and his sympathetic wife, Maria. It's not an important chapter in the Strauss oeuvre, but a distinctive one, with Strauss trying to meet the subject halfway through a leaner musical language but still hanging onto a literary integrity that makes it seem unusually overwritten. Conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch makes a passionate, polished case for the opera; the two main roles are knowingly and artistically sung by Bernd Weikl and the late Sabine Hass in a package that's altogether more convincing than the Robert Bass recording on Koch made in 1989. However, Strauss completists must hear the sonically compromised but more authoritative world premiere (now out of print), found on Koch/Schwann's Vienna State Opera Live series, with Hans Hotter and Viorica Ursuleac in the main roles, Clemens Krauss in the pit, and Adolf Hitler in the audience. --David Patrick Stearns Show more