It is enormously refreshing, after reviewing Carlos Kleiber's version of Der Rosenkavalier with less than enthusiasm last month, to be able to hail a fine new version, this time from Zurich Opera. This ambitious opera house has not always hit the jackpot -- their recent DVD of Tannhauser, for instance, was almost uniformly dismal. But now they have come up with something really rather wonderful.
Almost everything about this new Rosenkavalier is impressive -- the crisp, vividly recorded orchestral playing, the often astonishing singing, the acting (sometimes incorporating profound insights), and the unusual, stylish staging. For once Hugo von Hofmannsthal's great libretto, one of the finest in all opera, gets its due. When watching these DVDs you really do believe the soloists genuinely feel what they are singing, and in a sharper, more abrasive way than is usual even in good modern opera productions. On two occasions the Marshallin collapses onto the ground, for instance, overcome with emotion. There are no powdered cheeks and demure smiles behind fans in this production.
Rosenkavalier is about an older woman losing her lover to a younger one. This production, following the feelings expressed by the Marschallin in her great Act One monologue, extends this theme to a lament for the inevitability not only of aging but of death as well. This fits less well with the comic scenes, but is strongly moving in the great climaxes with their powerful undercurrents of transience and loss. Even in the Act Two duet where love is born between Octavian and Sophie, an aged retainer is seen behind and between them, trembling and white-faced like an aghast death's-head, horrified perhaps at his own decrepitude, and at the innocence of the two youngsters, seemingly unaware of what the years will do to them. He dies as the curtain falls.
In a generally strong cast, Vesselina Kasarova's Octavian is particularly impressive. Her voice is thrilling from the start and continues to be so. Malin Hartelius's Sophie is also wonderfully clear-voiced, and Alfred Muff's Ochs unusually genial and amusing. Pride of place, though, must go to Nina Stemme, far and away the most psychologically convincing and memorable Marschallin I have ever heard.
Instrumentally, too, this is very fine, beautifully recorded and played with instantly recognizable feeling. Listening to it, you come to think once again that Richard Strauss's opera contains some of the most sublime music for the stage ever written.
With its minimalist sets and eclectic costumes, this is a production that could have been stylish but soulless. That it isn't is almost entirely due to the conviction and committed performances of the principal singers. With all this going for it, the use of the same set for the first and last acts really doesn't matter very much.
All in all, this is a musically fine, visually fresh and everywhere sensitive and intelligent Rosenkavalier. That innovative gimmicks, of which there are quite a few, aren't allowed to detract from the often painful emotions of the principal characters is one of the strongest
reasons for recommending it.
I did not expect to enjoy Vienna Boys' Choir Sings Mozart, a re-issue on DVD (apparently especially for Taiwan) of a video dating back to 1989. It has its moments, however. Almost all the items -- sacred numbers performed in Vienna's Hofburgkapelle -- date from the composer's youth. It's strange to think that the longest piece, the Missa Solemnis KV 139, was written when he was 12, about the same age as the boys who here sing the treble and alto parts, both choral and solo. He actually conducted its first
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