Product Review

Filmed live in Baden-Baden by the veteran director Brian Large, Renee Fleming makes her debut in the role of Ariadne together with fellow key Strauss interpreters Sophie Koch and Christian Thielemann, following on from their Rosenkavalier triumph. Fleming stars opposite Kochs Composer and Robert Dean Smiths Bacchus. Philippe Arlaud is the producer and set designer.

Thielemann conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden, the orchestra to whom Strauss dedicated his Alpine Symphony and which premiered Feuersnot, Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier and Daphne.

Flemings voice might have been made for Ariadne and she achieved a great personal triumph in this production: The chief glory of the evening was hearing Renee Fleming, the Straussian soprano par excellence, making her role debut as Ariadne… As the possessor of what is, possibly, the most beautiful soprano voice in the world, she put her vocal treasures in the service of an empathic, nuanced interpretation of the role. From the creamy top, through a rich, warm middle, to the bewitching, darker colours of her lower register, Fleming poured her magnificent sound into Strausss enchanting melodic arcs, animating the sadness, vulnerability, and desire of the bereft princess... Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung