It’s very tricky and the tonality is complicated, just like her personality. STEMME: I fell in love with the character, but not exactly with the music, because this role requires a range of 2½ octaves. What challenges did you encounter when you first started to sing your roles? Its really something very, very special.ĪP: The vocal parts for all three of you are notoriously difficult. NYLUND: It’s really fantastic that two men have written this opera and it says so much about how a woman thinks and acts. Everything ends happily for the two couples. And the Dyer’s Wife pulls back from the brink of trading away her shadow. But gradually, the Empress learns to appreciate humanity and changes her mind. She and her Nurse try to entice the unhappy wife of Barak the Dyer to give up her shadow and thus remain childless in exchange for a life of luxury. In the story, the Empress, who comes from the spirit world, must acquire a shadow (enabling her to bear children) or else her human husband will be turned to stone in three days. Now the San Francisco Opera is presenting it for the first time in 34 years with a cast that includes three leading Wagner and Strauss singers: Nina Stemme as the Dyer’s Wife, Camilla Nylund as the Empress and Linda Watson as the Nurse.Īnother reason the work is a challenge is Hugo Hofmannsthal’s libretto, which mixes fantastical events with psychological insights. That’s one reason the opera, which premiered in 1919, is a relative rarity, though many consider it Strauss’s masterpiece. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Part fairy tale, part psychodrama, Richard Strauss’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” (The Woman Without a Shadow) calls for three big-voiced sopranos who can do justice to a long and difficult score.
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