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''Die Liebe der Danae'' (''The Love of Danae'') is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a February 1937 German libretto by Joseph Gregor, based on an outline written in 1920, "Danae, or The Marriage of Convenience", by Hugo Hofmannsthal.〔Boyden, p. 327〕 Strauss worked on the score in 1937, 1938 and into 1939, although he was pre-occupied with completing ''Daphne'', developing ideas with Gregor and finally replacing him as librettist for ''Capriccio'', and then succumbed to illness, which caused postponement for several months into 1940. The opera was finally finished on 28 June 1940.〔Boyden, pp. 327-339〕 However, for a variety of reasons including Strauss' perception that the failure of ''Die Frau ohne Schatten'', as he put it, was caused by having been "put on in German theatres too soon after the last war",〔Boyden, p.339〕 the composer refused to allow Clemens Krauss, to whom he had guaranteed the right to conduct the first performances, to stage it until two years after the war.〔 The opera is an ingenious mixture of comedy and Greek mythology and the final act "contains the opera's finest music, a fact recognized by Strauss."〔Boyden, p. 350〕 ==Performance history== Contradicting his original refusal to allow the first performance until after the war, it appears that Strauss had granted to Clemens Krauss as early as November 1942 permission to perform the opera as part of the Salzburg Festival. In a letter to the composer, Krauss states that "I shall then bring the work to its first performance in celebration of your 80th birthday" which would take place on 11 June 1944.〔Boyden, p. 349〕 Arrangements were made for mid-August performances in 1944, but, following the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler, Joseph Goebbels declared "total war" and closed all theatres within the Third Reich, resulting in the work not being allowed a public staging. The Nazis did however permit a single dress rehearsal in Salzburg, conducted by Clemens Krauss on 16 August, in order that Strauss and an invited audience could hear the work performed. During an orchestral rehearsal before the private presentation, Strauss walked down to the orchestral rail in order to listen closely to the beautiful final interlude in the last act. Rudolf Hartmann, the opera's original producer, wrote of the incident:
Hartmann went on to describe how, as the performance continued, those who witnessed the scene, (were)
In more recent years, the work has received only sporadic performances, mainly on account of its considerable vocal demands and the complexity of its stage directions. Nevertheless Strauss connoisseurs tend to have a special regard for the work. The eminent critic and Strauss biographer, Michael Kennedy, has written:
The first public performance, also under Krauss, was at the Salzburg Festival on 14 August 1952, after Strauss' death in 1949. It was then given at the Royal Opera House in London on 16 September 1953, under Rudolf Kempe. The first American performance was at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles on 10 April 1964. It was given as part of the 1982 and 1985 summer festival seasons by The Santa Fe Opera conducted by company founder and lifelong Strauss enthusiast John Crosby. The Semperoper in Dresden gave three performances of the opera in March 2009.〔Operabase performance data, on operabase.com〕 ``In 2006 Renée Fleming recorded the final interlude and Danae's aria from Act III with the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre conducted by Valery Gergiev for a Decca CD entitled ''Homage: The Age of the Diva''. The Bard SummerScape Festival mounted a new production of the full opera in 2011 with Meagan Miller in the title role, with the American Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leon Botstein and directed by Kevin Newbury; it was also recorded and released commercially in digital format. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Die Liebe der Danae」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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