Time is a Strange Thing in Music and Vision 8 Ottobre

Time is a Strange Thing
Teatro Real, Paris Opéra and La Scala
join forces for the centenary
of 'Der Rosenkavalier',
reported by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

One hundred years ago, on 26 January 1911 in Dresden, the most important 'Komödie für Musik' of the twentieth century had its premiere: Der Rosenkavalier, the unparalleled and unsurpassed masterpiece by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss. To celebrate the centenary of this really unique comedy, three major European opera houses have joined forces because a production of Der Rosenkavalier requires a major effort in terms of orchestra, voices, stage sets, costumes, lighting and alike. I was fortunate to see the second performance of the cycle at La Scala on 4 October 2011.
Der Rosenkavalier is so universally known that it does not need any presentation. Even in Italy, where in March 1911 it received a rather lukewarm La Scala reception (but it was sung in translation whereas one of the marvels of the Komödie für Musik is the perfect match between words and music), the opera has been staged quite frequently in all the major theatres during the last twenty years. Thus, this review focuses on the specific mise en scène.
Firstly, it is important to emphasize that, even though the three theatres label it as a new production, Herbert Wernicke died suddenly in 2002. Thus, this is a remake of what Wernicke had originally produced for the 1995 Salzburg Festival, when the musical direction had been entrusted to Lorin Maazel and an all-star cast had been selected. The Wernicke staging was successful at the Festival and in several theatres where it was proposed in the late nineties. It was revived at the 2009 Baden-Baden Festival, when a DVD was produced; the DVD is often shown on selected TV channels such as Mezzo and Classica. The Madrid-Milan-Paris joint venture is not the Baden-Baden revival on tour. The staging has been updated and revived by Alejandro Stadler. Also, new sets and new costumes have been prepared. Following Wernicke's style, during rehearsal, Stadler had almost a maniacal attention to acting. In addition, a young, and up-and-coming, musical director was chosen: Philippe Jordan, who in his early thirties is already in charge of the musical aspects of the Paris Opéra. Finally, in line with Wernicke's project (and also with the Hofmannsthal-Strauss' idea), a lot of care has been devoted to select a cast of singers who would have the physique du rôle of the characters and would also be great actors.
Way back in 1995, the Wernicke production was seen to be different from that considered 'the reference staging' -- ie the Otto Schenk production that for the last thirty years or so can be seen in Vienna and in Munich as well as on a DVD conducted by Carlos Kleiber. The Otto Schenk production is very similar to that seen in Dresden in 1911: we are in an unreal circa 1760 with an overflowing rococo so rich as not to be believed. The stage sets and costumes are based on Alfred Roller's sketches for the Dresden 1911 premiere; on his own account, Roller had borrowed many an idea from a series of William Hogarth's engravings. The sets and the costumes are so overblown that they willingly look unreal. As a matter of fact, the entire plot is based on the reality of the unreal: the silver rose ceremony at the basis of the story has never existed in Austrian traditions, the waltz (a basic element of the opera) was only a countryside folk dance -- mostly in Tyrol and Styria -- whilst in the Vienna palaces, aristocrats would engage in the gavotte or the weller, and les nouveaux riches either did not exist or, if they did, they were not a problem. Nonetheless, through the reality of the unreal in a stage setting where everything is excessive, the Otto Schenk production succeeded in conveying all the main messages of Der Rosenkavalier, especially that, as one of the protagonists says in the first act, 'time is a strange thing ...'. We must metabolize the fact that time goes by, both for the individual and for society. Schenk's production also pays a lot of attention to the most explicit comic aspect of the Komödie für Musik. Many productions all over the world have been more or less successful imitations of Schenk's work.
In 1995, Wernicke's work was highly innovative as compared to Schenk's. There was no overemphasized rococo: on the contrary, the stage set was a play of mirrors in a rather undefined period with costumes of the eighteenth century mixed with those of the nineteen fifties. Also the comic aspects had a less important place than in the Vienna and Munich 'reference' production. Finally, the main theme emerged to be a melancholia about the passing of time. Now we have seen more 'innovative' yet questionable productions -- eg Robert Carsen's in Salzburg in 2004 with the third act set in a brothel with many nude young men, or Keith Warner's in Spoleto in 2000 where each act took place in a different century. Hence, Wernicke's production appears traditional even if quite different from Schenk's and those of his imitators. A final comment on the conceptual aspects of the staging: because a-temporal melancholia is the main theme, the (silent) character of the Feldmarschallin's little black servant is replaced by a Pulcinella, a sweet and sour commedia dell'arte masque in both the Neapolitan and the French tradition. Also, as the single set of mirrors and projections allow it, in the third act there is an open-stage change of scene: from the tavern we are in a park in the Fall (the Wiener Prater?) where Octavian and Sophie are lying on the floor holding the silver rose (in preparation for love making or for death?), and Pulcinella replaces the silver rose with a red one. Thus, a fascinating stage production which raises many unanswered questions. In his analysis of Der Rosenkavalier, the German musicologist Gerd Uekermann underlines that, although the plot is set in the past, Hofmannsthal was aiming at 'timelessness', thus embracing the present; in 1911, the present was the decline of 'Felix Austria'. In 1995, and even more in 2011, is it the decline of Europe, at least of a European way of living?
The musical aspects of the production are melancholic but less disquieting than the staging. The Italian musicologist Quirino Principe emphasizes the perfect match of words and music. I rather feel as the British musicologist David Murray stated: 'the music glories in Hofmannsthal's text which satisfied Strauss like nothing before'. Philippe Jordan and l'Orchestra della Scala utilized very skillfully their 'symphonic' facility to its full scope with sumptuous effects and elevated intensity, yet with Strauss' modern penchant (in 1911) to insert chamber scale music into his opulent tapestries. In Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss outdoes Wagner with conversational music where the distinction between recitatives, arioso and formal set pieces are blurred. Jordan knows it very well and handles it just perfectly, eg like the great conductors of the past. For instance, even if the score is clearly tonal, Jordan uncovers some bold chromatic experiments that are seldom noticed.

Anne Schwanewilms as the Marschellin in Act I of 'Der Rosenkavalier'. Photo © 2011 Brescia e Amisano - Teatro alla Scala. Click on the image for higher resolution
No doubt, of the four principal characters, Octavian has the most difficult role: he is nearly always on stage and has to be a seventeen-year-old sex-starved young man, an adolescent torn between a marvelous thirty-three-year-old mistress (the Feldmarschallin) and a fifteen-year-old girl just out of school (Sophie), and, in disguise, a little whorish chamber maid. His role is very tough in the first scene where his mezzo voice has to match the horns in a great fervor. Joyce Didonato had the stamina to cope with the part and not to arrive too tired at the final duet-carol in G major where, with Sophie, he has the innocence of a babe in the woods.

Joyce DiDonato as Octavian and Anne Schwanewilms as the Marschellin in Act I of 'Der Rosenkavalier'. Photo © 2011 Teatro alla Scala. Click on the image for higher resolution
Anne Schwanewilms is a stunning Feldmarschallin; I also heard her a few months ago in Salzburg as the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten. She does not have a very strong voice, but she molds the tonalities from her Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding very well in the first act (when she tries to have Octavian learn that 'time is a strange thing') to the E for a full-voiced and full-hearted climax in the final scene, after the Romantic D flat in Hab'mir's gelobt ... ('I vowed to love even his love for another'). Also, and importantly, she is a young and attractive woman. The initial 'just after love-making' scene is, as intended by Hofmannsthal, distant from 'Wagner's intolerable erotic screaming', but Wernicke and Stadler make her and Didonato sing in bed over each other; a difficult posture not to be covered by the orchestra.

Jane Archibald as Sophie and Joyce DiDonato as Octavian in Act II of 'Der Rosenkavalier'. Photo © 2011 Brescia e Amisano - Teatro alla Scala. Click on the image for higher resolution
Sophie is Jane Archibald. Quite good vocally, especially in the second act coup de foudre and in the engrossing third act trio, but without a girlish enough appearance to be fifteen years old and just out of convent boarding school. Peter Rose is an impressive Baron Ochs both dramaturgically and vocally. He even dances quite well, and at the end of the second act he ends the reprise of Mit mir with the tricky and risky low E which many of his colleagues avoid.

Peter Rose as Baron Ochs and Joyce DiDonato as Octavian in Act III of 'Der Rosenkavalier'. Photo © 2011 Brescia e Amisano - Teatro alla Scala. Click on the image for higher resolution
It is well known that Strauss did not like tenors. In Der Rosenkavalier, however, he concocted a 'bravura aria' for a tenore italiano. La Scala engaged no less than Marcelo Álvarez, and Stadler made him sing as a Luciano Pavarotti caricature; great to hear and exhilarating to see.
Generally, the rest of the large cast was good, especially Peter Bronder and Helene Schneiderman (the odd couples of Italian busy bodies and cheaters, Valzacchi and Annina) and Ingrid Kaiserfeld (Sophie's nurse). 4 October 2011 was not a very good night for bass Martin Snell (the public notary). There were too many others to comment on each of them.

Jane Archibald as Sophie and Joyce DiDonato as Octavian in the final scene from Act III of 'Der Rosenkavalier'. Photo © 2011 Brescia e Amisano - Teatro alla Scala. Click on the image for higher resolution
After more than four and a half hour in the theatre, this was a very enjoyable night.
Copyright © 8 October 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

RICHARD STRAUSS
DER ROSENKAVALIER
LA SCALA
MADRID
PARIS
MILAN
ITALY
GERMANY
<< M&V home Concert reviews Anna Bolena >>