Elza van den Heever

Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads The Met Orchestra in an enticing all–Richard Strauss program, featuring the spectacular soprano Elza van den Heever in selected songs. The passionate orchestral suite from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier opera evokes the romance and intrigues of 18th-century Vienna, while the autobiographical Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) includes quotes from dozens of Strauss’s compositions and casts the composer himself as the titular hero. Imagine the surprise of critics who—already aghast at Strauss’s boldness—discovered themselves in movement two: “The Hero’s Adversaries.”