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Mar 17, 2007
Standing ovations and outstanding reviews for the new production of Richard Strauss’ “Ägyptische Helena” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. “The Met has backed Deborah Voigt up with a fanciful and handsome new production by David Fielding along with a strong supporting cast and, perhaps most crucially, the conductor Fabio Luisi. This dynamic Italian maestro led a nuanced, urgent and lucidly textured account of this lushly orchestrated score, presented here in its original version.” (Anthony Tommasini, New York Times). “The conductor Fabio Luisi, who has lately made himself indispensably exciting at the Met, took care of that. He led Strauss’ heatedly romantic essay on marriage with exacting verve and brilliant passion. All those purple chords, bouts of sputtering brass, confessional strings and ecstatic passages of reconciliation made it perfectly clear what was really going on” (Justin Davidson, Newsday). “Also to be credited is Fabio Luisi, the maestro in the pit. He is on a roll in New York, having shone in the Met’s ” Simon Boccanegra” (Verdi). Could he succeed the Met’s music director, James Levine, should that sad, nearly unthinkable day ever come? Mr. Luisi led ” Helen” with close to total assurance, and the orchestra played well for him” (The Sun).”The new Met is casting its nets in any number of directions. The arrival of The Egyptian Helen – with star singers like Voigt, and the even-better Diana Damrau as the island sorceress and a particularly charismatic conductor in Fabio Luis” (David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Iquirer).i “Der pragmatischen Einsicht widerspricht die Musik, die auf Magie, auf betörende Düfte und verführerische Farben setzt. Strauss mag ursprünglich an ein leichtgewichtiges Amüsement in der Nachfolge Jacques Offenbachs und seiner “Belle Hélène” gedacht haben. Er fährt dann aber doch allerschwerstes orchestrales Geschütz auf, und Fabio Luisi weiß es blendend einzusetzen. Das dichte orchestrale Gewebe wird bei ihm nie dick, er bringt es zum Funkeln und Leuchten, im chromatischen Parlando wie in der diatonischen Feierlichkeit. So hatten er und das Orchester keine Mühe, das opulente Zentrum der Aufführung zu markieren.” (Jordan Mejias, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).
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