Bridge Records Releases CD of LA Opera's DIE GEZEICHNETEN

(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 Birdsand 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), clickhere.
For more information about LA Opera, click here.

Test and expand your Broadway knowledge with our new game - The Broadway Match-Up! How well do you know your Broadway casting trivia?	Play the Daily Game, explore current shows, and delve into past decades like the 2000s, 80s, and the Golden Age. Challenge your friends and see where you rank!
How well do you know your Tony Awards history? Take our never-ending quiz of nominations and winner history and challenge your friends.	Can you beat your friends? Play today’s daily Broadway word game, featuring a new theatrically inspired word or phrase every day!