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| Ghent's opera house |
I may not be able to travel (much) for opera, but when traveling, I do seek opera out. So, on April 16, I took myself to hear Zemlinsky's
Der König Kandaules, performed by
Opera Vlaanderen in Ghent. It was a serendipitous chance to hear a relative rarity. I went in expecting to find the score difficult; I found it seductive. Given my fondness for crazy German orchestration (technical term), I probably shouldn't have found this surprising... but the richness of the score was absorbing and intricate. The Opera Vlaanderen performance benefited from really fine singing, as well as beautiful orchestral work. The varying textures of the score--lush and spiky by turns--were impressively realized by the orchestra under Dmitri Jurowski. Special kudos were deserved by the woodwinds, not only the important flute players, whose seductive playing is referenced by the characters on stage, but also the insinuating oboe. The brass, too, were admirably secure. The wildness--and, yes, strangeness--of the music felt at all times irresistible.
