DVD Review: Out of the Shadows

Die Frau ohne Schatten from Nagoya, Japan
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Screen-grab of Luana DeVol as the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten,
Image © 1992 Bavarian State Opera/ArtHaus Musik

Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten is his grandest work, a three-act fairy tale on an enormous scale. The piece requires seven stellar singers, a giant orchestra, and a panoply of visual effects to depict events on three different planes of existence as the story follows the marital troubles of two couples in their struggle to conceive children. This stunning production was filmed in Nagoya, Japan in 1992, was scheduled for broadcast on Japanese television, but objections from that country's censors led to the broadcast never being aired.