The Richard Strauss Project: Die Ägyptische Helena

In his ninth opera, Strauss shows how to not murder your wife...even if she's Helen of Troy.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Aithra (Diana Damrau) and Helen of Troy (Deborah Voigt) pose with the Omsiscent Mussel in
the Metropolitan Opera's 2007 production of Strauss' Die Ägyptische Helena.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2007 The Metropolitan Opera.

It's not always better down where it's wetter. Like Hollywood directors who ran into trouble when they decided the make motion pictures that take place underwater, a soggy fate awaited Die Ägyptische Helena ("The Egyptian Helen"), the sixth and penultimate collaboration between Richard Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Like its mythological protagonist Helen of Troy, this opera is still remembered today as a girl with a bad reputation. It is the only Strauss-Hofmannsthal collaboration to not have a place in the standard repertory.