Arts & Events

In his book A Song of Love and Death: The Meaning of Opera, Peter Conrad writes, “Strauss tries to outwit history by being both Mozart and Wagner at once….Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919) began as Strauss;s Zauberflõte, an ingenuous fairy tale, but ended as something more like his Ring, a top-heavy treatise on cosmic biology.” As I sat in the audience on June 10 during San Francisco Opera’s current revival of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without A Shadow), which has a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannstahl, I often perceived similarities between this Strauss opera and both Mozart’s Die Zauberflõte and Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.  

To start with, In all these operas, there are mixtures of gods, demi-gods and humans. In Zauberflõte, Sarastro and The Queen of the Night are gods or at least god-like, he representing the sun and light while she represents the darkness of night. Yet their child, Princess Pamina, is very much human, as is Prince Tamino as well as Tamino’s sidekick Papageno and his eventual wife, Papagena. Likewise, in Wagner’s Ring, Wotan is a god and has the supernatural powers of a god. Yet he is also somewhat limited or bound by pressures from his wife, Fricka, and by his daughter Brüunnhilde, who disobeys her father by aiding the human Sieglinde once that woman’s brother/lover Siegmund has been killed by Hunding. This action by Brūnnhilde also guarantees the future rise of humanity by allowing Sieglinde to give birth to the hero Siegfried, who eventually brings about the downfall of the gods. Following this logic, I see the Empress in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, daughter of the god Keikobad and herself a god or demi-god who, like Brūnnhilde, comes out on the side of the humans, in this case, Barak the Dyer and his wife. 

Interestingly, both the Empress and the Dyer’s wife begin this opera as barren females who have not been able thus far to bear children. In the Empress’s case, her infertility is symbolised by her lacking a shadow. Her father, the god Keikobad decrees that within three days she must obtain a shadow, and thereby become fertile, or her beloved husband, the Emperor, will be turned to stone. The Empress’s conniving Nurse counsels the Empress to descend to the human world and steal a shadow from a human female. The Empress naively agrees to do this, and the Nurse leads the Empress to the humble earthly household of Barak the Dyer and his wife. 

After three years of marriage, this human couple is still childless, and Barak’s wife blames her husband for this and denies her interest in having children, even going to the point of forcing her husband to sleep separately from her. Further, she seems unwilling or unable to appreciate the goodness of her husband, to whom she is unreconciled in marriage. In this respect, Barak and his wife resemble Die Zauberflõte’s Sarastro and his estranged wife, The Queen of the Night. When the insidious Nurse tries to persuade the Dyer’s wife to give up her shadow in exchange for a wealth of gold and other riches, the Empress gradually begins to sympathise with Barak and his wife, and she eventually refuses to accept the shadow of the Dyer’s wife. 

The Empress returns to the heavenly realm of her stern father and even dares to petition him in person on behalf of Barak and his wife. Though her husband the Emperor, whom she dearly loves, has now been turned to stone, the Empress prevails upon her father, and she miraculously begins to cast a shadow, which frees the Emperor from his stone encasement. Keikobad, the father, like Mozart’s Sarastro, has been initially unfairly accused of being stern, unyielding and vehemently against the human world; yet he turns out, as does Sarastro, to be quite fair, even sympathetic to the pleas of his daughter on behalf of the humans. Indeed, by the end of Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, even the Dyer’s wife has belatedly recognised the inherent goodness of her husband Barak, to whom she now gives herself willingly as their marriage now promises they will indeed have children. 

In this San Francisco Opera production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, led by the company’s former music director Donald Runnicles, the first-rate cast featured the outstanding Swedish soprano Nina Stemme as Barak’s wife, superb Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund as the Empress, Danish bass-baritone Johan Reuter as a finely drawn Barak, San Francisco-born Linda Watson as the evilly conniving Nurse, and David Butt Philip as the beleaguered Emperor. Nina Stemme, who has thrilled San Francisco audiences in many operas, including her first Brūnnhilde in the complete Ring cycle, possesses a voice rich in various colors, and she used them all in portraying the many-sided emotional states of the Dyer’s wife — longing, anguish, despair, resentment, and, finally, glowing appreciation of Barak her husband. Likewise, Camilla Nylund also distinguished herself as the multi-faceted Empress, who refuses to seize her own happiness if it comes at another’s expense. In the role of Barak, Johan Reuter gave a vocally robust performance, striking a perfect balance between down-to-earth common sense and endearing patience at his young wife’s initial recalcitrance. San Francisco native Linda Watson, who has previously won acclaim in Europe in the role of the Dyer’s wife, here sang the powerfully insidious role of The Nurse. British tenor David Butt Philip was vocally effective in the high-lying role of The Emperor. 

In small roles, bass Stefan Egerstrom was the Spirit Messenger of Keikobad; Barak’s brothers (or fellow workers) were sung by tenor Zhengyi Bai, and bass-baritones Wayne Tigges and Philip Skinner. The Nightwatchmen were sung by baritones Javier Arrey and Kidon Choi and bass-baritone Jongwon Han. The opera’s fantastical characters such as the Falcon and Voices of Unborn Children were sung by Elisa Sunshine, Arianna Rodriguez, Mikayla Sager, Olivia Smith, Gabrielle Beteag, Nikola Printz, and Victor Cardamone. 

The colorful sets were the work of noted painter David Hockney. The Lighting Director was Justin A. Partier, and Costume Designer was Ian Falconer. This production was staged by Director Roy Rallo. Last but by no means least, Conductor Donald Runnicles deftly brought out all the orchestral colors in Strauss’s score. In every respect, this Die Frau ohne Schatten was a first-rate production that will long be fondly remembered by all who see it.