R. Strauss: The Silent Woman

About the Event

A comic opera in three acts, op. 80

How beautiful music is, especially when it’s over! These words, not devoid of self‐irony, end Richard Strauss’s rarely performed opera, which is presented here with the collaboration of Austrian guest artists in a joint production of the Palace of Arts and the National Philharmonic Orchestra. “The best libretto for a comic opera since The Marriage of Figaro,” is how Strauss himself acknowledged the work of the librettist Stefan Zweig, firmly insisting that the name of the Jewish writer, who had by then fled to London, should remain on the programme and posters for the première in Dresden in 1935. The work was subsequently banned after its second performance, while Strauss himself was forced to resign from his post as president of the Reichsmusikkammer. 
The duped but kindly protagonist of the story, Sir Morosus, is played by Kurt Rydl, an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera. Budapest audiences have already seen him in the role of Hagen at the Wagner Days in 2010 and a book has been written about him entitled “The Mega Bass”. Julia Bauer performs the role of Aminta, the woman who pretends to be silent but who later torments Morosus as a shrew. The nephew of Morosus is played by Bernhard Berchtold, who has already partnered Bauer on several occasions and who critics say successfully conquers the heights of this role. This is no mean feat when one considers that Strauss could not stand tenors, once even describing them as a “disease” – a fact sometimes apparent in the extraordinary difficulty of the tenor parts. Paul Armin Edelmann, who plays the comic role of the barber, could be said to have the authentic Richard Strauss style flowing in his veins, given that his father was one of the great bass‐baritones in Richard Strauss and Wagnerian roles in the first half of the 20th century.