Download Bridge Records releases rare masterpiece Die

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Bridge Records releases rare masterpiece
Die Gezeichneten (The Stigmatized) on CD
Franz Schreker's rarely-performed work
was recorded live at LA Opera's 2010 U.S. premiere
(Los Angeles) November 8, 2013 — Today, Bridge Records releases a CD of Franz Schreker's
haunting 1915 masterpiece Die Gezeichneten (The Stigmatized) in a live recording from LA Opera
conducted by James Conlon. LA Opera presented the work in 2010 as part of its Recovered Voices
series, dedicated to reviving operas by composers who were suppressed by the Holocaust. The
three-disc set features a complete libretto of the opera in German and English, and annotation by
Christopher Hailey.
The international cast of singers is led by tenor Robert Brubaker as Alviano Salvago and soprano
Anja Kampe as Carlotta Nardi. They are joined by baritone Martin Gantner as Count Tamare,
baritone James Johnson as Duke Adorno and bass-baritone Wolfgang Schöne as Lodovico Nardi,
along with the LA Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
About the opera
"Our times are full of strange things." With these words in the second act, the beautiful Carlotta Nardi
begins her seduction of the hunchback Alviano Salvago. It is a scene of tender intimacies and
unsettling revelations, of veiled allusions and naked truths—and all couched in music of a supple
lyric beauty that has few equals in operatic literature.
Die Gezeichneten, which had its premiere in 1918 at the Frankfurt Opera, is the best known work by
Franz Schreker. The opera is a rapturously evocative late-Romantic tragedy in which an unlikely
love triangle plays out on a paradise pleasure island amidst a group of decadent nobles who are
marked by lust and depravity. Although none of Schreker’s operas had ever been staged in the
Western hemisphere before LA Opera's 2010 production, Die Gezeichneten has begun to return to
the stage in Europe. A 1995 Berlin Symphony Orchestra recording was part of Decca’s celebrated
Entartete Musik series and a spectacular 2005 Salzburg Festival production was filmed and released
on DVD.
The Bridge Records CD of Die Gezeichneten (Bridge 9400A/C), which was made possible by the
generosity of Thurmond Smithgall and the Lanie & Ethel Foundation, is LA Opera's first audio-only
recording. It is the third release of performances from LA Opera's Recovered Voices series, following
a DVD of Braunfel's The Birds and a DVD featuring a double-bill of Ullmann's The Broken Jug with
Zemlinsky's The Dwarf.
The composer and his era
Franz Schreker was one of the most important and successful opera composers of the early 20th
century, but he fell into obscurity after the rise of the Third Reich. With its racist ideology and
systematic suppression—particularly, although not exclusively, of Jewish musicians, artists and
writers—the Nazi regime silenced two generations of composers and, with them, an entire musical
heritage. The suppression of these composers and musicians caused the greatest single rupture in
what had been a seamless transmittal of German classical music. The son of a Jewish father and a
Catholic mother, Franz Schreker (1878-1934) rose to prominence in Vienna and Berlin as the
greatest opera composer of his generation. In 1920, he was appointed director of the Berlin
Musikhochschule, Germany’s leading conservatory. In 1932, right wing pressure forced the Jewish
composer’s resignation from the Musikhochschule and with the advent of Hitler in 1933, he was
dismissed from his tenured position at the Prussian Academy of the Arts. While engaged in a
protracted battle over his retirement pension, and anxious about his future—financial as well as
professional—Schreker was felled by a stroke in December 1933, from which he died on March 21,
1934, two days before his 56th birthday.
About Bridge Records
Bridge Records was founded in 1981 by Becky and David Starobin. The company issues CDs,
DVDs and digital downloads. Bridge's catalog includes classical music, jazz, world music, and a
wide range of new music. The company has a publishing arm, Editions New Rochelle, and an artist
management, Bridge Records Management. For more information about Bridge Records, click here.
Additional information
To download high-res photographs of LA Opera's 2010 production of Die Gezeichneten (The
Stigmatized), click here.
For more information about LA Opera, click here.
LA Opera's production of Die Gezeichneten was made possible
by major grants from Marilyn Ziering and the Ziering Family Foundation.
Special support provided by Thurmond Smithgall and the Lanie and Ethel Foundation.
Additional generous support from Herbert Simon Foundation, Louis Colen, Mark Houston Dalzell, Michael and Jane Eisner,
Righteous Persons Foundation, Eugene and Marilyn Stein, the Marc and Eva Stern Foundation,
Mr. & Mrs. William S. Fisher, Krauthammer Foundation, Lauder Foundation, and an Anonymous Donor.
Rolex is the Official Timepiece of LA Opera.
Yamaha is the Official Piano of LA Opera.
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