Strauss: Die Liebe Der Danae Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Strauss: Die Liebe Der Danae Blu-ray Movie Review

Financial meltdown.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 4, 2012

Creditors descend like vultures on the remains of what was obviously a very wealthy estate. The bankrupt owner of any number of lavish luxury items stands by helplessly as the scavengers fight over who will get what, while at the same time the bankrupt former owner of these items wonders what might happen to himself and, especially, his daughter. “Ripped from the headlines” of today’s newspaper? Well, hardly: this is the first scene of Richard Strauss’ late career opera Die Liebe der Danae, a piece Strauss himself described as a “joyful” or “cheerful” mythology, hardly the adjectives one might immediately think of when considering a story of a family in financial ruin and a desperate daughter’s attempts to hitch herself to a kind of cosmic Sugar Daddy. But against all odds, Strauss’ Die Liebe der Danae is indeed a largely sunny piece, a wonderful companion piece to the other recent late career Strauss Blu-ray release, his final grand (if small scaled) opera, Capriccio. Working with a much larger cast than in Capriccio, and in a mythological milieu which is decidedly less realistic than the chamber opera which discusses the relative merits of music and poetry, Strauss nonetheless crafts a delicate but vigorous piece that harkens back in a way to the tableaux filled days of early opera, when spectacle mattered at least as much as plot or character. And with a nicely imagined physical production here courtesy of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, this Die Liebe der Danae manages to update the myth to relatively modern times, something that really shouldn’t seem all that odd considering the daily litany of news of financial ruin which greets most of us when we open our morning paper or turn on any 24 hour cable news outlet.

Pollux (Burkhard Ulrich), traditionally a King, is here cast more as a tycoon, Donald Trump style, who sees his worldly possessions being carted away by a horde of creditors. The beleagured man has to find a wealthy suitor for his daughter, Danae (Manuela Uhl), and figures he’s found the perfect candidate in Midas (Matthias Klink), whom Pollux mistakenly believes can turn anything he touches to gold. While that technically may be true, what Pollux doesn’t realize is that that magical capability comes courtesy of Jupiter (Mark Delavan), who has entered into a surreptitious deal with Midas whereby Midas gets that vaunted touch of gold, but Jupiter may get his hands on Danae, the object of his fondest amorous dreams. Jupiter further demands that Midas go to Danae to act as a messenger for Jupiter’s wishes, and that’s when things get really complicated.

Die Liebe der Danae has perhaps the most interesting history of all of Richard Strauss’ many operas. Rather incredibly, according to the liner notes included with this Blu-ray release, Die Liebe der Danae has had an unbelievably sparse twenty or so productions worldwide in the sixty or so years since it was finally given a premiere three years after the death of its composer. Strauss, who had been ensconced in Nazi Germany, supposedly writing away for the Reich and its greater glory, but perhaps had stayed there more for his Jewish daughter in law and his beloved grandchildren, who more likely than not escaped the horrors of the Holocaust only because of their Strauss connection, had chosen—for whatever reason—not to allow Danae to be premiered earlier, due to a variety of extenuating circumstances. The war, of course, was a major contributing factor, and later, when Danae did seem to be on the verge of receiving a German debut, the plot to assassinate Hitler put a kibosh on plans. In the meantime, the Nazi regime was being routed soundly by the Allies, and a perhaps unexpected result was that Strauss’ reputation had tanked, and he felt, perhaps understandably, that his life’s work would be buried under the detritus of the horrors that Hitler had visited upon the world. (Strauss was able to attend a private dress rehearsal for the performance that was slated to be done before the Hitler assassination plot unfolded, and that was the only time he was able to hear his score in its entirety.)

Part of what has kept Danae off the boards is due no doubt to its static, otherworldly quality which is at least partially ameliorated by the times in which we live, and which helps to connect modern day audiences to legendary figures of yore. But perhaps even more importantly, this is some of Strauss’ most challenging, stratospheric vocal music, and it is devilishly difficult to sing. That issue has mixed results with regard to this 2011 Deutsche Oper Berlin production. Uhl’s Danae manages to leap the intervallic peaks and valleys of the role, and she is also beautifully vulnerable, yet with a steel of spine, and is the heart and soul of this production, despite Strauss’ assertion that Jupiter is really the main role of the piece. Unfortunately, this production’s Jupiter, Mark Delavan, has some issues with his upper register, and often sounds like he’s straining uncomfortably to completely encompass Strauss’ insanely wide ranges.

Kirsten Harms has had a somewhat troubled tenure at Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Die Liebe der Danae marked her swan song with the company. Harms crafts a really interesting physical production here, one that is sparse but is immensely compelling, including a giant grand piano which hangs upside down from the flies for most of the piece, and from which drops the “rain” of Midas’ gold, in this case, actual pages from Strauss’ score. While Harms obviously has a more modern time milieu in mind, she wisely doesn’t pin it down firmly to any one era, and in fact the scene with Jupiter and his wives could have come out of Monteverdi, at least with regard to the costumes. Conductor Andrew Litton is a stolid, if somewhat uninspired, interpreter of Strauss’ work, managing to create some forward momentum and a fair amount of emotional spark, but there’s still a kind of dissociative quality to some of the playing that keeps it from reaching into the deepest recesses of the heart.

Strauss: Die Liebe Der Danae Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Die Liebe der Danae is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of ArtHaus Musik with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. While this transfer is certainly eye popping at times, the unusual lighting scheme, which casts almost all of the opera in cool blue tones, combined with the bright, shiny gold of many of the costumes, leads to some middling effects on the Blu-ray, including some quasi-posterizing in midrange and far range shots. Colors bloom ever so slightly and a good deal of fine detail is therefore lost, at least in shots taken from a distance. Close-ups are much better, though a certain degree of posterizing is still present, at least in terms of the costumes. While colors are skewed because of the odd omnipresent blues, the palette is rather robust and well saturated. Contrast is iffy, once again due to the lighting, and black levels also tend to vary over the course of the opera.

Strauss: Die Liebe Der Danae Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with most of the classical music releases presented on Naxos distributed labels, Die Liebe der Danae is presented with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.0 surround mix as well as an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. While fidelity is quite good throughout the opera, there are some considerable balance and miking issues which bury singers, including some who have relatively little competition from the orchestra. Danae's first aria is going along fine, until suddenly mid-line, she literally can't be heard for a moment, something which occurs throughout the opera for most of the principals. There seems to be no logic to this phenomenon, at least in terms of stage placement when it occurs, but perhaps there were either some technical issues that couldn't be overcome, or the wide ambitus of Strauss' music simply prevented better projection. If you can get past this anomaly, there's a lot to like here, including some really lustrous higher frequencies which are bright without being brittle. Ensemble singing is also quite good, which helps to offset at least somewhat the straining which is evident in some of the singers' voices.

Strauss: Die Liebe Der Danae Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (1080i; 15:26) has footage of a public rehearsal, with some costumes but without sets. The cast does seem to be working with flats that have little pictures taped on them of either what sets will be there or perhaps props they'll use.
• Synopsis (1080i; 7:16) is a bit unusual for an ArtHaus Musik release in that instead of just a narrated description of the plot playing out to stills from the production, we get Andreas K. W. Meyer, Dramatic Adviser to this production, actually talking about Die Liebe der Danae and its import.

Strauss: Die Liebe Der Danae Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Die Liebe der Danae is probably the least known of Strauss' many operas, and for that reason alone it probably is going to generate significant interest with this new Blu-ray release. There are both pluses and minuses to this production and to this Blu-ray. Uhl is especially winning as Danae, and the physical production is intriguing and at least tangentially meaningful in terms of the financial ruin so many are experiencing these days. On the minus side, some of the other singers sound tired and not quite at the top of their games, and there are some mixing and/or balance issues here which result in various lines being more or less dropped. For the curious, this is certainly a worthwhile release which merits checking out. For others, hopefully there will be a more solid release coming down the line that can deal with some of these issues.