David Butt Philip (Apollo) and Heidi Stober (Daphne) in “Daphne in Live performance” at Seattle Opera. Photograph: Sunny Martini.
Richard Strauss’s Daphne, which premiered in 1938, doesn’t get carried out a lot in america. It needed to wait till 1960 for its US premiere, in live performance performances in New York Metropolis. Its first staged performances have been in Santa Fe, in 1964.
Why is that this? The rating is attractive –– hey, it’s Strauss, what do you count on? –– however the libretto by Joseph Gregor is considerably clunky. Daphne’s transformation right into a laurel tree is tough to stage. And since it’s Strauss, it options not just one unattainable tenor function however two. The title function can be nothing to sneeze at, calling for sustained upper-register brilliance.
Seattle Opera, which is struggling financially, has in the reduction of its season considerably in the previous few years and, sadly, has utterly given up on Wagner performances, as soon as a specialty of the corporate. To fill a few of the hole, the corporate has now offered live performance variations of two rarities: 2025’s Carthage-acts-only Les Troyens, which was properly sung and performed however marred by some odd cuts, and this 12 months’s Daphne, which was nothing in need of sensational.
Daphne is subtitled “A Bucolic Tragedy,” and that it’s. The opera takes place through the feast of Dionysus, and there are quite a few references in it to rutting animals (and males). The rating is bucolic; even with no surroundings, it evokes the pure world so strongly you can see bushes and fields earlier than you.
Daphne (soprano Heidi Stober) probably in her late teenagers, is extra snug with nature than with individuals. She is clearly discomfited by males and by something to do with intercourse. Her childhood buddy and playmate, Leukippos (tenor Miles Mykkanen), is in love together with her in each sense, erotically and emotionally. She feels that he’s like a sister to her; a beloved buddy, however not a lover. (Leukippos performs the flute, and Strauss supplies quite a few pastoral solos for that instrument, all performed with sinuous, gleaming magnificence by principal flutist Demarre McGill.)
Daphne’s mother and father, the fisherman Peneios (bass Matthew Rose), and his spouse Gaea (mezzo-soprano Melody Wilson), are leaders of the feast. Gaea needs that Daphne have been open to like and Leukippos, however, alas, it’s to not be.
Alongside comes Apollo (tenor David Butt Philip), the solar god, disguised as a cattle herder (everybody else herds sheep). Nonetheless, he can’t utterly disguise his godhood, and there’s marvel when he seems. He woos Daphne, who’s attracted but additionally frightened.
Leukippos challenges Apollo to disclose his true id –– difficult a god isn’t a good suggestion –– and shortly finds himself lifeless, struck down by the god. Daphne is stricken with grief. Apollo arranges to have his father Zeus flip Daphne right into a laurel tree.
Aside from Butt Philip, singing his third Apollo, the entire singers in these performances have been making their function debuts. The opera’s success actually hinges on the three principal roles, Daphne and her tenor suitors, Leukippos and the god Apollo.The singers in these roles have been all excellent.
Miles Mykkanen (Leukippos) and Heidi Stober (Daphne) in “Daphne in Live performance” at Seattle Opera. Photograph: Sunny Martini.
As Daphne, girl-turned-laurel tree, Stober sang magnificently and with majestic poise, her shimmering voice and luminous excessive register supreme for the half and different Strauss roles too. You possibly can see her Daphne recoil from the earthiness of bodily love and her love for the pure world, even with no units and minimal course. Daphne is an extended and tough function, but Stober was as recent on the shut as within the opening.
The much less unattainable tenor function is that of Leukippos, taken by Mykkanen, a younger American who has had latest starring roles in Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence at SFO and Mason Bates’s The Wonderful Adventures of Kavalier & Clay on the Met. His shiny voice and craving interpretation suited the half properly.
Butt Philip sang Apollo with magisterial energy and darkish magnificence, his dramatic tenor ringing all through his vary. His bearing, too, was regal. You possibly can imagine that he may strike you lifeless in a second of fury.
Rose introduced a phenomenal and resounding bass to the function of Peneios. As Gaea, Wilson sang with heat smoothness however with much less quantity and vocal presence than the remainder of the solid; props to her thematically acceptable inexperienced robe embroidered with gold laurel leaves!
Ilya Silchukou, Martin Bakari, Micah Parker, and Michael J. Hawk have been 4 shepherds. Meryl Dominguez and Sarah Coit have been two maids. These six roles present coloration and interjections with out taking part in huge elements within the bigger drama, however all these singers carried out properly.
David Afkham has expertise in Strauss. Conducting Daphne for the primary time, he led a gorgeously clear and sweeping efficiency. With the orchestra on stage, behind the principals and refrain, he saved each second in good stability, supporting the singers and by no means swamping them, even within the greatest orchestral outbursts.
Members of the Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera Refrain, led by conductor David Afkham, in “Daphne in Live performance” at Seattle Opera. Photograph: Sunny Martini.
Members of the Seattle Symphony present the orchestra of the Seattle Opera, they usually performed marvelously. Mark Robbins, Affiliate Principal Horn of the Symphony, took on the alphorn half, outstanding within the opera’s opening, then not heard once more. Concertmaster Emerson Millar supplied various stunning violin solos. Ben Hausmann on oboe and Benjamin Lulich on clarinet performed splendidly, their traces intertwining with these of McGill’s flute all through.
There was not a lot in the best way of staging, although David Gately’s course introduced out every character’s character even with out loads of motion and interplay. Altering Stober’s outfit from a mauve robe to a billowing inexperienced pantsuit for Daphne’s transformation was a pleasant, thematically acceptable contact. Ranleigh Starling’s stunning lighting enhanced and supported the drama. The projected laurel silhouettes have been pretty.
Lisa Hirsch
Lisa Hirsch studied music at Brandeis College and Stony Brook. She studied flute significantly for various years and has sung all kinds of music in lots of choruses. She has written about opera and classical music for San Francisco Classical Voice, Opera Information (RIP), Opera, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She blogs about these topics at Iron Tongue of Midnight, which additionally contains lots of her pictures.
Although she has attended San Francisco Opera and different firms because the early Nineteen Eighties, her opera obsession actually began within the early 90s, when she began listening to historic singers.
