Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 22:16:00 +0000 From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: ENO Rosenkavalier Der Rosenkavalier, ENO, London Coliseum, 1 February 1997 The Feldmarschallin Yvonne Kenny Octavian Susan Parry Baron Ochs John Tomlinson Vachazzi John Graham-Hall Annina Elizabeth Vaughn Faninal Peter Sidhom Sophie Rosemary Joshua (replacing Donna Brown) (etc. -- tenors and hangers-on on request) Conductor David Atherton Original director Jonathan Miller Revival director David Ritch This was the first time I'd seen or listened to Der Rosenkavalier complete, and I had conflicting expectations. It's the favorite opera of a very good friend, who often talks enthusiastically about it, so I was prepared for a grown-up work. But I'd never been able to engage with the music (which my friend plays a lot). I was worried that it might turn out to be a concatenation of fragments designed to show off the singers and provide the sort of operatic high points a 1911 audience expected. My previous experience with Strauss/Hoffmansthal didn't provide much guidance, either: I'd seen Elektra with Nilson and Troyanos, studied it in some depth for a paper in a course on Freud, and found it brilliant though distressing; and I'd found Salome a right old load of schlock. But Der Rosenkavalier is clearly nothing like either, except perhaps for some self-consciously Freudian overtones. In the event, I found Jonathan Miller's production (and the program notes) a helpful guide. The sets and I think some of the other staging recalls his "Enlightenment" Marriage of Figaro from the mid eighties (which bored me rigid at the time), while the inn scene and the characterization of Ochs and Annina in particular evoked Verdi's Falstaff (Annina=Quickly, also suggested by a non-canonical final scene in which she hands out dosh to the children). This second element was a major surprise to me--I was expecting elegaic reflections on time and mortality. In fact, John Tomlinson's joyously monstrous Ochs was the highlight of the performance, something like Mr Toad with testosterone. It seemed the only reason he didn't try to shag Octavian as well as Mariandel was that he wouldn't try it on with another aristocrat. Ochs ignoring the constraints of time and decorum was central to this production, but Octavian, in youthful denial, also had a fair innings. Susan Parry, who I remember as a very tall Teobaldo in the Proms Don Carlo last year, was delightfully polymorphous--languid and girlish in bed with the Marschallin but exactly like a young chap in drag as Mariandel. Mariandel had more than an touch of Eliza Doolittle, which was a bit odd in a production which otherwise didn't do anything with the "dialects" of the original. I think it was meant to make us ask whose creation she was. The other obvious theme (visual and conceptual) in the production was Hogarth's Marriage a la mode -- Miller seems to be a Hogarth buff, as he also did a very good Beggar's Opera using Hogarth images. Unfortunately, the levee didn't seem to have any visual organization at all (from where I was sitting). Rosemary Joshua as Sophie looked strikingly like the wife in the Hogarth paintings -- I assume the indisposed Donna Brown would have as well with the dress and wig. Yvonne Kenny as the Marshallin was understatedly elegaic -- she was already the still centre of things in Act I, where I expected more anxiety, and vocal fireworks. (From hearing the Schwarzkopf recording, I expected the Marschallin to be stage centre the whole time and doing, you know, soprano stuff.) It wasn't any surprise to find her appearing as a totally kindly deus ex machina at the end. I'm not really able to comment on the singing in detail (except John Tomlinson makes lots of wonderful sound and makes it look easy, apart from a croak that might have been deliberate). This wasn't a singers' production, but one where the music was fully integrated into the drama. To me, the trio sounded gorgeous in all respects, including the orchestra, but that could have been the music... I'm not sure that this is a production for purists or voice buffs. It might (with a bit of preparation) persuade theatre-lovers that there's something in opera, or baroque-fiends like me that there's something in early twentieth century opera. And it's on on 15 February -- just the thing to see if your Valentine's date goes awry.