Bard SummerScape Opens "The Egyptian Helen" — One of Strauss's Rarest Operas

July 24–August 2 | Annandale-on-Hudson, NY | Opening night July 24, 6:30pm

Bard SummerScape opens its opera production for the summer on July 24 with Richard Strauss's The Egyptian Helen, one of the rarest operas in the repertoire and the least-performed of the six he wrote with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It runs through August 2 at the Sosnoff Theater.

The work had a successful Dresden world premiere in 1928 and early runs at the Metropolitan Opera, then largely disappeared from stages. Strauss was particularly attached to it, and the musical case for its neglect is hard to understand—The Guardian has noted the orchestral writing is "of a richness that Strauss never surpassed," and The Classical Source calls the score a combination of the massive and majestic with some of Strauss's most intimate and heartrending writing.

The libretto spins an ironic retelling of the Helen myth set in the aftermath of the Trojan War: a phantom Helen was sent to Troy while the real, faithful Helen sat out the entire conflict on a remote Egyptian island under the supervision of a sorceress. Returning Menelaus, convinced he is killing his treacherous wife, must be persuaded he has her real self back. Hofmannsthal and Strauss treat the whole thing with knowing, sophisticated wink.

Director Christian Räth, making his fourth SummerScape production, frames the sorceress Aithra as the true director of the story—seeing Helen as her alter ego and reshaping the opera around questions of fame, identity, and the construction of a public self. Canadian soprano Ambur Braid, whom the New York Times has called "compelling," makes her SummerScape debut as Helena. Braid trained at the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory, and has performed extensively in Europe and North America in dramatic soprano repertoire including Salome, Tosca, and Isolde.

Tenor John Matthew Myers, described by OperaWire as "incredible," returns as Menelaus; soprano Jana McIntyre, previously "bright and earnest" per the New York Times, plays Aithra. Leon Botstein conducts the American Symphony Orchestra in the original 1928 edition of the score.

Sosnoff Theater, Fisher Center at Bard College, 60 Manor Ave., Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Tickets at fishercenter.bard.edu.