Cyndia Sieden - Strauss: ARIADNE AUF NAXOS, Zerbinetta's aria in English, London 1994 High E6 скачать в хорошем качестве

Cyndia Sieden - Strauss: ARIADNE AUF NAXOS, Zerbinetta's aria in English, London 1994 High E6

THE SONGBIRD: Cyndia Sieden was born Cyndia Siedentop in California in 1961. As a teenager, she was a concert soloist in Seattle and appeared with the Seattle Opera as the Forest Bird in 1980, as well as being the Pacific Northwest regional winner of the Met Auditions in 1981. Back in California, Sieden began taking private lessons with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in 1982, through which was she invited to the Salzburg Mozarteum, winning first place in 1983. Her European debut role was Rosina in Munich; her American debut in a leading role came in 1984 as Marie in Tampa. Since then, Sieden has built an impressive international career in a wide range of baroque, classical, and modern works in many of the world's opera houses and festivals: Paris, Lyon, Barcelona, Brussels, Halle, London (Covent Garden and ENO), Glasgow, Sydney, Vienna, Beijing, Palermo, Frankfurt, Berlin, Geneva, Vancouver, Boston, Phoenix, Santa Fe, Chicago, Washington DC, Cardiff, Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Palermo. Her specialty has been Mozart, including many Queens of the Night, of course, and Strauss, including Zerbinetta in London, Munich, Vienna, Seattle, Bonn, and Tokyo. But she also has a reputation for championing new works. THE MUSIC: Richard Strauss's opera "Ariadne auf Naxos" premiered twice. The first was in 1912 in Stuttgart where it was conceived as a short opera to accompany a new adaption of Moliere's play, "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme." This version was performed in other cities over the next year (Zurich, Munich, Prague, and London), but the play/opera hybrid concept proved ineffective (and way too long at over six hours). Working with his librettist/partner Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Strauss refashioned the opera as a stand-alone work with a newly added prologue, which premiered in this new form to success in Vienna in 1916. This version of the opera was quickly embraced by critics, artists, and the public -- it has since been recorded commercially many times and is performed regularly around the world. Only rarely have there been staged or even concert productions of the earlier 1912 version and there is only one commercial recording. "Ariadne" is one of my absolute favorite operas -- I love its witty libretto, its satiric character archetypes, its intriguing themes about art, and Strauss's simply astounding music. Zerbinetta's grand aria "Grossmächtige Prinzessin" is arguably the most daunting coloratura showpiece ever written -- incomprehensibly so in the longer, higher 1912 version, but still insane in the 1916 version. It's not just long at nearly 12 minutes; it doesn't merely contain a full armada of coloratura vocal acrobatics (trills, cadenzas, scales, filigree, high notes, wide leaps, and so on); it's not only the freewheeling harmonic structures -- no, this scene demands a level of virtuosic musicianship and theatrical flair that is simply unmatched. Zerbinetta is a coloratura soubrette on steroids! In this scene and role, Strauss invented an entirely new musical language to exploit the unique glories of the coloratura soprano voice. He revisited this proprietary mode of highly gymnastic vocalism a few other times afterwards: in the art song "Amor" (1918), with Fiakermilli in "Arabella" (1933), and for Aminta in "Die schweigsame Frau" (1935).