Ruth Leon recommends…Der Rosenkavalier – Metropolitan Opera
Ruth Leon recommendsDer Rosenkavalier – Metropolitan Opera
The Met has just released their video of Robert Carsen’s brilliant fin-de-siècle staging of Der Rosenkavalier, on Met Opera on Demand. It stars the great Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen in her role debut as the Marschallin in Strauss’s grand comedy. The sterling cast also includes mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey as the Marschallin’s lover Octavian; soprano Erin Morley as Sophie, the beautiful younger woman who steals his heart; and bass Günther Groissböck as Baron Ochs. Simone Young conducts.
When Der Rosenkavalier first opened at La Scala in Milan, operagoers booed its many waltzes, believing that the waltz was ‘just dance music’ and had no place on the opera stage. But by now, 1913, following its 1911 premiere in Dresden, Strauss’ comic opera was a firm favourite on the stages of London, New York, Vienna and Prague and the critics were vanquished by its sheer popularity.
Not just a comic opera, Der Rosenkavalier also has its serious preoccupations with infidelity, aging, sexual predation, and selflessness in love.
It’s misleading to illustrate this post with an image of a different video release of the same opera in the same production.
My admiration for the wonderful Lise Davidsen is second to none, but I feel that Renée Fleming is a more credible, and hence more touching, Feldmarschallin.
I saw this at the Met Live in HD and Gunther Groissbock as Baron Ochs steals every scene he is in.
Yes, you chose the most appropirate word: steals. He is similar to the tenor Grigolo who also “steals” the scenes in which he appears. Both exaggerate musically and in their acting, doing injustice to the intentions of the composer and detracting from their colleagues on stage. I have always suspected that the intentions of such performers were simply to cover up their vocal weaknesses.
The role of Baron Ochs is for exaggerated comedy. Gunther Groissbock is excellent in humorous roles.
No, it is NOT! One must not forget that Baron Ochs is exactly that: a BARON, in German Landadel, i.e. landed gentry. His manners are tolerated where he resides, but are not well-received in Vienna where they are simply out of place. That may be “humorous” to you, Potpourri, but it is NOT to the nobility in Vienna. His political ambitions, i.e. marrying into the newly rich bourgeois family Faninal are blatently obvious, but nothing stops him until the Marschallin finally cuts him short in the third act with the line “Weiß er nicht, wenn eine Sach’ ein End hat?”, using indirect speech asking “Don’t you know when the game is over?” Checking my resume for some 50 years of opera-going I found that I had seen, inter alia, the following singers as Baron Ochs: Sotin, Ridderbusch, Jungwirth, Adam, Czerwenka, Vogel, Moll, Missenhardt, Rydl, Rose, Hawlata. The only “problem” for those who were not Austrian, was switching back and forth from High German to Austrian Dialect. But NONE of them made a clown of Baron Ochs. Actually the fact that Baron Ochs takes himself so seriously is what makes him humorous, not exaggeration.
I do miss the old production. Sigh.
Saw it on Live in HD: very fine singing and thoroughly entertaining production. The orchestra sounded well too.