Die Frau ohne Schatten, Royal Opera House

Never underrepresented in the big national opera theatres, Richard Strauss’s extensive oeuvre gets a substantial airing at the Royal Opera House during 2014. Die Frau ohne Schatten will be a popular choice for fans of the “five prima donnas, eight french horns and a box of fireworks” Strauss repertoire. 

With a highly sophisticated libretto by Strauss’s longtime collaborator Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the opera tells the story of an empress who possesses no shadow, being the daughter of the King of the Spirit Realm, Keikobad. Keikobad (who, in a brilliantly ominous piece of storytelling, never actually appears onstage) decrees that she must search for and find her shadow in three days, or her husband, the Emperor, will turn to stone. Cue a sprawling four-hour epic - complete with metamorphosis, imprisonment, and spontaneous earthquakes - that is bound to set pulses racing.

As well as requiring an orchestra of gargantuan proportions, Die Frau ohne Schatten contains no less than five exceptionally demanding main roles, all of which contain their own unique hurdles and pitfalls. In this performance the roles are taken by a veritable supergroup of Andries Botha (the Emperor), Andrea Magee (the Empress), Michaela Schuster (the nurse), Johan Reuter (Barak the dyer) and the Russian soprano Elena Pankratova (the dyer’s wife). 

We are particularly excited to see Pankatrova perform in her role, which she has very much made her own since bursting onto the mainstream opera scene with it in 2010. Meanwhile, Royal Opera House veteran Semyon Bytchkov takes up the baton for this performance, so we can expect a deft negotiation of Strauss’s heavyweight orchestration throughout.

A shoutout must go out to director Claus Guth’s spectacular production, which blew Milanese audiences away at La Scala during the 2012/13 season. The staging is reportedly immaculate, and the use of shadow and visual effects greatly enhances the magic of Hofmannsthal’s libretto, ensuring that the production will be a transcendent experience in all respects. Tickets for Die Frau ohne Schatten are already on sale, and are bound to sell out soon, so get them while you have the chance. Perhaps setting yourself a deadline as urgent as Keikobad’s would do the trick.

Die Frau ohne Schatten will be performed on March 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, and on April 2.