Camilla Nylund made her début in 1995 at the opera in Hanover, where she sang the rôle of Michaëla in Bizet’s Carmen, and was immediately offered a contract until 1999. In 1999, she became a member of the ensemble of the Semper Opera in Dresden. Camilla Nylund’s rôles include the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, Pamina in The Magic Flute, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Antonia in Tales of Hoffmann, Marie in The Bartered Bride, Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Agathe in Der Freischütz, Rosalinde in the operetta Die Fledermaus, Mimi in La Bohème and the Countess in Capriccio. In 1996 Camilla Nylund made her début at the Finnish National Opera in the rôle of the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro—a rôle she has later also sung at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf.

Camilla Nylund regularly appears with many European orchestras, and she has participated in TV and radio recordings with the Finnish Radio Orchestra. She has been awarded several prizes including first prize in Finland’s most highly esteemed singing competition Lappeenranta and the Lilli Lehmannn Medal. On CD Camilla Nylund has recorded works by, among others, Schumann, Schubert, Sibelius, Kuula, Debussy, Britten, Mikko Heiniö, Reger, Denisov, Hoffmann and Mozart.

Richard Strauss enjoyed early success as both conductor and composer, in the second capacity influenced by the work of Wagner. He developed the symphonic poem (or tone poem) to an unrivalled level of expressiveness and after 1900 achieved great success with a series of impressive operas, at first on a grand scale but later tending to a more Classical restraint. His relationship with the National Socialist government in Germany was at times ambiguous, a fact that protected him but led to post-war difficulties and self-imposed exile in Switzerland, from which he returned home to Bavaria only in the year of his death, 1949.

Operas

Richard Strauss created an immediate sensation with his opera Salome, based on the play of that name by Oscar Wilde. Collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal followed, resulting in the operas Elektra and the even more effective Der Rosenkavalier in 1911, followed by Ariadne auf Naxos. Der Rosenkavalier (‘The Knight of the Rose’) remains the best known of the operas of Richard Strauss, familiar from its famous concert waltz sequence. From Salome comes the orchestral ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’, which occurs at an important moment in the drama. The late opera Die Liebe der Danae (‘The Love of Danae’), completed in 1940, may also be known in part from orchestral excerpts. Other operas are Die Frau ohne Schatten (‘The Woman Without a Shadow’), Die ägiptische Helena, Arabella, Intermezzo, Daphne and finally, in 1941, Capriccio.

Orchestral Music

Symphonic Poems

In the decade from 1886 Strauss tackled a series of symphonic poems, starting with the relatively lighthearted Aus Italien (‘From Italy’) and going on to Don Juan, based on the poem by Lenau; the Shakespearean Macbeth; Tod und Verklärung (‘Death and Transfiguration’); Till Eulenspiegel, a study of a medieval prankster; Also sprach Zarathustra (‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’), based on Nietzsche; a series of ‘fantastic variations’ on the theme of Don Quixote; and Ein Heldenleben (‘A Hero’s Life’).

Concertos

Concertos by Strauss include two for the French horn, an instrument with which he was familiar from his father’s eminence as one of the leading players of his time. There is an early violin concerto, but it is the Oboe Concerto of 1945, revised in 1948, that has particularly impressed audiences.

Other Orchestral Works

Strauss wrote various other orchestral works, some derived from incidental music for the theatre, music for public occasions or his operas. The Symphonia domestica and An Alpine Symphony may rank among the symphonic poems, in view of their extra-musical content, while the poignant Metamorphosen for 23 strings, written in 1945, draws inspiration from Goethe in its lament for what has been lost.

Vocal Music

In common with other German composers, Strauss added significantly to the body of German Lieder. Most moving of all, redolent with a kind of autumnal nostalgia that is highly characteristic, are the Vier letzte Lieder (‘Four Last Songs’). He composed songs throughout his life, with a substantial body of such works written in adolescence.

Piano Music

Strauss’s piano music dates principally from his last years at school, illustrating both his precocity and his understanding of the instrument, which then became so apparent in his songs.

Wagner was a remarkable innovator in both the harmony and structure of his work, stressing his own concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the ‘total work of art’, in which all the arts were brought together into a single unity. He was prepared to sacrifice his family and friends in the cause of his own music, and his overt anti-Semitism has attracted unwelcome attention to ideas that are remote from his real work as a musician. In the later part of his career Wagner enjoyed the support of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and was finally able to establish his own theatre and festival at the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. He developed the use of the leitmotif (in German Leitmotiv – ‘leading motif’) as a principle of musical unity, his dramatic musical structure depending on the interweaving of melodies or fragments of melody associated with characters, incidents or ideas in the drama. His prelude to the love tragedy Tristan und Isolde led to a new world of harmony.

Operas and Music Dramas

Wagner won his first operatic success in Dresden with the opera Rienzi, based on a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. This was followed a year later, in 1843, by Der fliegende Holländer (‘The Flying Dutchman’), derived from a legend recounted by Heine of the Dutchman fated to sail the seas until redeemed by true love. Tannhäuser, dealing with the medieval Minnesinger of that name, was staged in Dresden in 1845. Wagner’s involvement in the revolution of 1848 and subsequent escape from Dresden led to the staging of his next dramatic work, Lohengrin, in Weimar, under the supervision of Liszt. The tetralogy The Ring—its four operas Das Rheingold, Die Walküre (‘The Valkyrie’), Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (‘The Twilight of the Gods’)—is a monument of dramatic and musical achievement that occupied the composer for a number of years. Other music dramas by Wagner include Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (‘The Mastersingers of Nuremberg’), and his final work, Parsifal.

Orchestral Music

The best known of Wagner’s orchestral compositions is the Siegfried Idyll, an aubade written for the composer’s second wife, Cosima (illegitimate daughter of Liszt and former wife of Wagner’s friend and supporter Hans von Bülow). His early works also include a symphony.

Songs

At the root of Wagner’s drama of forbidden love, Tristan und Isolde, was his own affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of a banker upon whose support he relied during years of exile in Switzerland. The five Wesendonck-Lieder are settings of verses by Mathilde Wesendonck.