AN EYE ON THE HORIZON

‘When it storms upon the waves / The shipman’s wife knits at home, / But her heart is yearning / Out to the wild sea.’ Based on the poem of the same name by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Richard Strauss’s melodrama Enoch Arden tells the story of a sailor who goes to sea in order to save his family from penury and when he returns, many years later, finds his wife, Annie, has remarried to one of her old suitors. This work, with Dietrich Henschel in the title role, is followed by lieder of Richard Strauss, sung by Sally Matthews. Both singers are also appearing in Strauss’s opera Capriccio, which, like the melodrama genre, explores the relationship between words and music. 

PROGRAMME

• Richard Strauss Enoch Arden, ein Melodrama für Pianoforte zweihändig, op. 38, TrV. 181 (1897)
• Richard Strauss Ophelia-lieder, op. 67