After nearly five months of focusing on Italian coloratura music, I really have to switch gears. I'll circle back to Italy later. Let's enjoy German coloratura music, starting with the genius that was Richard Strauss.

THE SONGBIRD: Canadian soprano Jane Archibald has sung most of the coloratura roles in the standard repertoire, and then some, on stages around the world. After studying in Canada, she joined the young artist program at the San Francisco Opera in 2005, where she sang Elvira in "L'Italiana in Algeri" and Queen of the Night in a special one-act version of Mozart's opera intended for kids. In 2006, she joined the Vienna State Opera, debuting as Musetta and singing Sophie, Zerbinetta, Aminta, Queen of the Night, Marie, Olympia, and Eudoxie. Her Met debut came in 2010 as Ophelia (a new production that Dessay dropped out of) and came back in 2013 as Adele for that season's run of "Die Fledermaus." Archibald has sung major Mozart, baroque, bel canto, and modern operatic roles in Zurich, Lucerne, Geneva, Paris, Aix, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Milan, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, London, Sante Fe, and Israel, as well as across Canada.

THE MUSIC: Richard Strauss's opera "Ariadne auf Naxos" premiered twice. The first was in 1912 in Stuttgart where it was conceived as a short opera to accompany a new adaption of Moliere's play, "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme." This version was performed in other cities over the next year (Zurich, Munich, Prague, and London), but the play/opera hybrid concept proved ineffective (and way too long at over six hours). Working with his librettist/partner Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Strauss refashioned the opera as a stand-alone work with a newly added prologue, which premiered in this new form to success in Vienna in 1916. This version of the opera was quickly embraced by critics, artists, and the public -- it has since been recorded commercially many times and is performed regularly around the world. Only rarely have there been staged or even concert productions of the earlier 1912 version and there is only one commercial recording. "Ariadne" is one of my absolute favorite operas -- I love its witty libretto, its satiric character archetypes, its intriguing themes about art, and Strauss's simply astounding music. And, of course, I adore Zerbinetta's grand aria "Grossmächtige Prinzessin," arguably the most daunting coloratura showpiece ever written -- incomprehensibly so in the longer, higher 1912 version, but still insane in the 1916 version. It's not just long at nearly 12 minutes; it doesn't merely contain a full armada of coloratura vocal acrobatics (trills, cadenzas, scales, filigree, high notes, wide leaps, and so on); it's not only the freewheeling harmonic structures -- no, this scene demands a level of virtuosic musicianship and theatrical flair that is simply unmatched. Zerbinetta is a coloratura soubrette on steroids! In this scene and role, Strauss invented an entirely new musical language to exploit the unique glories of the coloratura soprano voice. He revisited this proprietary form of highly florid chromatic vocalism a few other times afterwards: in the art song "Amor" (1918), with Fiakermilli in "Arabella" (1933), and for Aminta in "Die schweigsame Frau" (1935).

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