Higher Powers

The mythological and the domestic are the two central threads that run through Strauss’ operas, and if Die Frau ohne Schatten falls unquestionably into the former category, both its spirit and human worlds are rendered familiar by a desire for domestic stability shared by the four protagonists. For the new production at Dresden’s Semperoper, director David Bösch managed to concoct a staging in which elements of the magical and mundane were held in near-perfect balance, letting neither its fantastic elements nor its human quarrels seem intrusive or implausible; when combined with a first-rate cast and the transcendent refinement of Christian Thielemann’s musical direction, the production offered a fittingly grand tribute to Strauss and von Hofmannsthal’s greatest achievement.

The story of Die Frau is set within a densely symbolic world of…