13.04.2025

SABINE DEVIEILHE | Role debut as Zdenka in Strauss' Arabella at the Vienna State Opera

After previous operatic successes in recent years as Strauss heroines Sophie / Der Rosenkavalier and Zerbinetta / Ariadne auf Naxos on Europe’s major stages such as La Scala, the Opernhaus Zürich, and the Festival d’Aix en Provence, Sabine Devieilhe returns to the Vienna State Opera this season for her debut as Zdenka in Strauss’ Arabella.

A role requiring expressive control as well as technical finesse throughout, Zdenka is central to the opera’s emotional and thematic fabric. Her character brings tension and irony, particularly through the use of cross-dressing, unrequited love, and identity confusion — themes Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal often explored. Regarding the staging, Director Sven-Eric Bechtolf and set designer Rolf Glittenberg moved the action to the time when the opera was written, around 1930, in order to emphasize more clearly that the characters in the play are not operetta archetypes.

Not long after, Sabine Devieilhe makes her second Strauss appearance in Vienna, this time to reprise the role of Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, a role with which she celebrated immense success earlier this season at Milan’s La Scala, with an interpretation highly acclaimed as “pure and ethereal, with a luminous presence”.

Those not fortunate enough to secure a ticket this time can catch the performance in its live broadcast on Austrian national radio station Ö1 on 19 April 2025.

Cast:

Wolfgang Bankl, Count Waldner
Margaret Plummer, Adelaide
Camilla Nylund, Arabella
Sabine Devieilhe, Zdenka
Michael Volle, Mandryka
Michael Laurenz, Matteo

Christian Thielemann, Musical Director
Sven-Eric Bechtolf, staging
Rolf Glittenberg, stage
Marianne Glittenberg, costumes