Berlin/Hamburg 24-05-2010
A very young Richard Strauss - www.foto-face.com
Simone Young at Hamburg Opera - foto Andreas Praefcke - Wikipedia
There are not that many women conductors, and there are not that many Australian conductors generally and in Europe specifically – and that makes Simon Young even more remarkable!
However as with this Friday’s performance of Strauss’s Elektra at the Hamburg Staats Oper – the remarkable is becoming more common-place.
As with so many of her other productions in Hamburg, this ‘Elektra’ was extremely professional, well produced, well sung with extremely versatile orchestra – and befittingly it was warmly and very well received.
‘Elektra’ first performed at the Dresden State Opera in 1909, is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, adapted to a drama of the same name by Hugo von Hofmannsthal who set the German-language libretto. –it was to be the first of much collaboration between composer and librettist.
The plot of the opera is based upon the Greek tragedy of the same name by Sophocles. The unrelenting gloom and horror that permeate the original play produce, in the hands of Hofmannsthal and Strauss, a drama whose sole theme is revenge.
With Elektra Strauss would make his most radical departure from musical convention into modernity – from which he later retreated with his most successful and money making venture the Opera ‘Der Rosenkavalier’.
Orchestrally, Elektra deploys dissonance, chromaticism and extremely fluid tonality in a way which recalls but moves beyond the same composer’s Opera ‘Salome’ four years earlier.
To support the overwhelming emotional content in the opera, Strauss requires a very large and in some ways unusual orchestra, with lots of brass and including unusually cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, tambourine, castanets, celesta ,glockenspiel and a doubling-up of Cellos and Violins into different groups.
The bi-tonal or ‘extended Elektra chord’ is a well known dissonance from the opera while harmonic parallelism is also prominent modernist technique.
Vocally the lead roles calls for 3 sopranos and a mezzo soprano and Ms Young did an outstanding job of keeping the ensemble together. Having the likes of top world-class Strauss & Wagner talent like MARIANA LIPOVSEK , and the absolutely fabulous DEBORAH POLASKI did make her work a bit easier
Her grip of the baton for the orchestra, ensuring Beat and tempo and the cueing of the singers along with imposing the demanding score make this a formidable task, and she was clearly up to the task. The opera will be presented again this coming Thursday………..in Hamburg? GO SEE IT!!
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Read ’OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog’ Review of the greatest Strauss opera of all time………’Die Frau ohne Schatten’ ………….”Barak – but not Obama – enthralls Berlin !!”
.http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/berlin/2009/12/14/barak-%e2%80%93-but-not-obama-%e2%80%93-enthralls-berlin/
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Following biographical information about Ms Young was based on information provided by Wikipedia.
Simone Young was born in Sydney 1961 and studied composition, piano and conducting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Commencing in 1983 Young worked at Opera Australia as a repetiteur, under conductors including Charles Mackerras, Richard Bonynge, Carlo Felice Cillario and Stuart Challender. Young started her operatic conducting career at the Sydney Opera House in 1985. In her early years, she was assistant to James Conlon at the Cologne Opera, and to Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera and the Bayreuth Festival. Since then, she has conducted at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Vienna State Opera, the Opéra Bastille in Paris, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and at other important opera houses and with prestigious symphony orchestras worldwide. From 1998 until 2002, Young was principal conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Norway.
From 2001 to 2003, Young was chief conductor of Opera Australia in Sydney. Her contract was not renewed after 2003, with one given reason as the excessive expense of her programming ideas.
Young made her first conducting appearance at the Hamburg State Opera in 1996. In May 2003, she was named both chief executive of the Hamburg State Opera and chief conductor of the Philharmoniker Hamburg, posts which she assumed in 2005. In 2006, she became Professor of Music and Theatre in Hamburg University. Critics of the magazine Opera World selected her in October 2006 as the Dirigentin des Jahres (Conductor of the Year).
Young was the first female conductor at the Vienna State Opera in 1993. She conducted the Sydney Symphony Orchestra when they performed Advance Australia Fair at the 2000 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Sydney. In November 2005, she was the first female conductor to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic.
In August 2008 Young appeared in the reality TV talent show-themed television program, Maestro on BBC Two, when she was part of the judging panel.
She has been appointed a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of France. On 26 January 2004, in the Australia Day Honours, Young was named a Member of the Order of Australia (AM):
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‘Elektra’ will be presented one more time this coming Thursday, 27th MAY in Hamburg – info at;
http://www.hamburgische-staatsoper.de/de/2_spielplan/index.php?tmpl=performance&event=83435&t=Kalender&english=1
MUSIKALISCHE LEITUNG -SIMONE YOUNG
CHOR -FLORIAN CSIZMADIA
KLYTÄMNESTRA – MARIANA LIPOVSEK
ELEKTRA – DEBORAH POLASKI
CHRYSOTHEMIS -SILVANA DUSSMANN
AEGISTH -PETER GALLIARD
OREST -MICHAEL VOLLE
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