Jana McIntyre in a Straussian coloratura singing lesson

THE SONGBIRD: Jana McIntyre received her Masters in Vocal Performance from the Manhattan School of Music. She apprenticed with Tulsa Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and San Francisco Opera. McIntyre won first prize in the Alan M. and Joan Taub Ades Competition and is an award winner from the Jensen Foundation, Giulio Gari Foundation, George London Foundation, Art Song Preservation Society, and Metropolitan National Council, among others. Her professional debut was as Amore in Gluck’s "Orfeo ed Euridice" in Brooklyn. Roles she has performed regionally include Queen of the Night, Ännchen, Zerlina, Norina, Semele, Adele, Daphne, and Aminta.
THE MUSIC: Strauss's comic opera "Die schweigsame Frau" (The Silent Woman) premiered in Dresden in 1935 -- his first major opera with a new librettist since his close collaborator Hugo von Hofmannsthal died in 1929. Librettist Stefan Zweig based the work on a play by Ben Jonson. Though it has some stretches of iconic Straussian music and some admirers, it has generally been seen as a problematic work and is rarely performed or recorded. It has had only two productions in the history of the Vienna State Opera, first in 1968 with 37 performances and then in 1996 with 28 performances. There has been only one production at the Salzburg Festival in 1959 and it has never been performed at The Met.
The leading female character Aminta is married to Henry, the nephew of a wealthy retired naval Captain who must be surrounded by quiet due to hearing trauma experienced in battle. When the Captain discovers Henry and his wife are opera singers, he threatens to disinherit his nephew due to their noise. Their opera troupe plots to trick the Captain by having Aminta disguise herself as a shy "silent" woman who pretends to marry him, but then becomes as loud as possible at all times (the plot is very reminiscent of "Don Pasquale"). Aminta is a high coloratura role (as it the much smaller role of Isotta, another soprano in the opera troupe). She doesn't have a solo aria per se as the opera is written in an ensemble-based structure. There is, however, one scene at the beginning of Act Three whereby Aminta and Henry pretend to do a singing lesson to annoy the Captain while he is sleeping. Here the libretto literally references Monteverdi's "L’incoronazione di Poppea," but Strauss's music barely resembles the original. It starts as a short solo, then becomes a duet, which then morphs into another short duet based on Legrenzi's opera "Etecole e Polinice" as noted in a footnote in the score.