Opera Note: Der Rosenkavalier

The most obvious thing you could say about last night's production of Der Rosenkavalier is that it's a shame we didn't see Susan Graham when she first performed in it here in 1995. This remark is not quite as mean-spirited as it sounds. Graham is one of the most polished singers of her generation, and also among the most talented and she gave it everything she had in her. But the part of the young Octavian (it's a trouser rôle) is boiling with youthful ardor, and no amount of pyrotechnics will obscure the fact that she is 49.

In an ironic way, this is only fittting. For the theme of Strauss's opera is the bitter certainty of lost youth and the consequence of loss--specifically, lost love. Whatever edge may have been lacking in Graham, then, only added to the poignancy of the performance of Renée Fleming as the aging Marschallin, who rejoices in the arms of her young swain, and then facilitates his departure to a more age-appropriate amour. In life, Fleming is just 17 months older than Graham. In the theatre, it was wonderful to see two such talents work together but you couldn't forget the stern limitations of age.

Indeed, time defined the evening in at least one other sense as well. Recall, this is a season that opened with a brand new Tosca met by a fusillade of boos. The production of Rosenkavalier is 40 years old. The staging won (at least a smatttering of) applause at the beginning of each of the first two acts.

Fleming and Graham were both fine in their somewhat implausible relationship but probably the real stars of the evening where two: one, Kristinn Sigmundsson, as the (basso) lecherous baron. Some reviews have said that he wasn't strong enough, though I didn't notice. What he did was to play with a consistent darkness throughout, eschewing the kind of buffoonery that can turn the Baron into a minor-league Falstaff.

The other was Edo de Waart as the director (substituting for James Levine). He directed with loving attention to detail and limitless patience--or enough, at any rate, so as to string the evening out to four and a half hours. But it seems to work: Strauss wrote every one of these notes, and it is reasonable to assume that he expected them to be played.

People talk about Rosenkavalier as Strauss' "conventional" opera. In a way, I suppose this is fair comment: after Salome and stuff, a step back, to boy/girl, thwarted by unsympathetic father. But the addition of the Marchallin as the older woman ditched and acquiescent--that is enough to pull it out of the conventional mold. And the music: recall this is 1911, just a year before Puccini hasn't even done La Fanciulla del West. Strauss took as a long way and maybe we are still catching up with him.