With Richard Strauss’s penultimate, satirically mythological opera Die Liebe der Danae (The Love of Danae) after a draft by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the Salzburg Festival continues its series of operas by the Festival founders Hofmannsthal and Strauss with the Wiener Philharmoniker under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst.

Krassimira Stoyanova, who is a regular fixture at the Salzburg Festival, heads a truly supreme cast and emerges as the “one in a thousand, the true Strauss lyric-dramatic soprano who can soar and swoop, working miracles on phrases that never stop coming” (The Artsdesk).

Bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny “sings this Jupiter almost unsurpassably” (FAZ), he “is so vocally majestic that Danae’s choice of Midas seems implausible” (Financial Times).

Alvis Hermanis’s colourful production brings oriental flair to the Salzach, his “staging was spectacular above all else” (Opera Today).

Die Liebe der Danae is narrowly linked to the Festival’s rich history. Due to conditions during World War II, the Salzburg Festival, which had commissioned the opera for summer 1944, couldn’t give the public premiere. Instead only a single dress rehearsal, attended by Strauss himself, was performed for an invited audience. Thereafter, the opera was staged in Salzburg only twice and very seldom anywhere else in the world.

“Once more, this very rarely presented opera returned successfully on stage, leaving the audience with unforgettable impressive images embedded in soft romantic sound.” - Opera Online

Cast:
- Jupiter: Tomasz Konieczny
- Merkur: Norbert Ernst
- Pollux: Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
- Xanthe: Regine Hangler
- Midas: Gerhard Siegel
- Semele: Mária Celeng
- Europa: Olga Bezsmertna
- Alkmene: Michaela Selinger
- Leda: Jennifer Johnston

Picture: 16:9 -NTSC
Sound: PCM Stereo
Language: Deutsch
Subtitles: Deutsch, Français, Italiano, Español, Japanese, Korean
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 126 mins
Production year: 2016