Various - Richard Flury: A Florentine Tragedy: Opera in One Act, The Death of Sappho

The Swiss composer Richard Flury (1896�1967) felt the fascination for A Florentine Tragedy, Oscar Wilde�s drama of love and violence in Renaissance Italy, that also attracted his near-contemporary Alexander Zemlinsky: they set the same libretto. Flury responded to the text with this dark and swirling one-act verismo opera, sizzling with sexual tension, the vocal lines of the three characters unfolding over an orchestral texture remarkable for its plasticity and kaleidoscopic colour. It is preceded here by a dignified but impassioned operatic scena setting Grillparzer�s dramatic treatment of the suicide of the Greek poetess Sappho.