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A Love Letter to Vienna Milano
Teatro alla Scala
10/12/2024 - & October 15, 19, 22*, 25, 29, 2024
Richard Strauss : Der Rosenkavalier, opus 59
Krassimira Stoyanova (Die Feldmarschallin Fürstin Wendenberg), Kate Lindsey (Octavian), Sabine Devieilhe (Sophie), Caroline Wenborne (Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin), Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Annina), Günther Groissböck (Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau), Michael Kraus (Herr von Faninal), Gerhard Siegel (Valzacchi), Piero Pretti (Ein italienischer Sänger), Bastian-Thomas Kohl (Ein Polizeikommissar, Ein Notar), Jörg Schneider (Der Haushofmeister bei Faninal, Ein Wirt, Ein Tierhändler), Haiyang Guo (Der Haushofmeister bei der Feldmarschallin), Gabriella Locatelli, Eleonora De Prez, Eleonora Ardigò (Drei adelige Waisen), Laura Lolita Peres Ivana (Eine Modistin), Luigi Albani, Guillermo Esteban Bussolini, Andrzej Glowienka, Emidio Guidotti (Vier Lakaien der Marschallin, Vier Kellner), Giorgio Valerio (Hausknecht)
Coro del Teatro alla Scala, Alberto Malazzi (Chorus Master), Coro di Voci Bianche dell’Accademia del Teatro alla Scala, Marco De Gasperi (Chorus Master), Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, Kirill Petrenko (Conductor)
Harry Kupfer (Stage Director), Derek Gimpel (Revival Stage Director), Hans Schavernoch (Sets), Yan Tax (costumes), Jürgen Hoffman (Lighting), Thomas Reimer (Videography)
(© Brescia e Amisano/Teatro alla Scala)
The buzz in Milan was all about Russian conductor Kirill Petrenko, chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, for his long‑awaited La Scala opera debut. The audience tended more to lovers of orchestral music than opera, which is unsurprising, as the Milanese typically appreciate orchestral music in general. During Dominique Meyer’s outstanding tenure at La Scala, a large number of German operas took their rightful place at the venerable house, and the Milanese public consequently acquired over time a more refined and diverse taste for music.
As for the Russian maestro’s direction, Petrenko did not disappoint. The Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, which has vastly improved in the last decade, was in a state of grace under his baton. It was enchanting during the presentation of the rose in Act II and in much of Act III. My one reproach would be its loudness at moments, smothering the voices, an easy pitfall in Strauss, though thankfully this didn’t occur for any pivotal scenes.
As one would expect at La Scala, the singers were generally excellent, but not uniformly exceptional. Most luminous was Bulgarian soprano Krassimira Stoyanova as the Marschallin, a role she has often played. Despite a long career, her voice has lost none of its beauty or brio, and her upper register is intact. She presented a less fragile Marschallin than most. Despite her awareness of the ravages of time, she remains self‑confident. At the end of the work, when she gives up her young lover Octavian, she’s already turned the page. This may be harsh, but it confirms her own words to Baron Ochs in Act III: faire bonne mine à mauvais jeu (in French in the libretto). It’s the aristocratic stiff upper lip which director Kupfer may have wanted Stoyanova to convey.
Less felicitous was the choice of American Kate Lindsay as Octavian. A disappointing Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia in Vienna last season, Lindsay’s timbre is unappealing. Moreover, one could not clearly hear when she sang piano. While the orchestra was sometimes too loud, no voice was covered as much as Lindsay’s. It was amusing that when she changed her voice to impersonate Mariandel, the Marschallin’s supposed chambermaid, she conjured the witch in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel or Despina in disguise in Così fan tutte. Baron Ochs must have truly undiscerning taste! As an actress, she was convincing as a young man in this trouser role, but she failed to inhabit the aristocratic posture of a young nobleman.
Sabine Devieilhe is France’s leading coloratura, and hence easily provided the beautifully stratospheric notes for the role. However, her voice is small, and was initially somewhat shrill, but as she warmed up, this unpleasantness was quickly gone. Ideally, Sophie is a lyric soprano with extreme ease in the upper register rather than a coloratura leggero. Possibly in an aggiornamento to the early twentieth century, Kupfer gave this Sophie more character than is usually the case. With or without Octavian, this Sophie would not have wed the boorish Baron Ochs.
Austrian bass Günther Groissböck has sung Baron Ochs on the world’s major stages and has made this role his own. However, it would seem he’s made it too much of a rôle fétiche. Usually interpreted as a boorish older provincial nobleman, Groissböck plays him as a younger oversexed rake, self‑assured and confident with his good looks and charm. While this is a valid and refreshing view, Groissböck overdoes it. The final outcome is an overacted Baron Ochs. Nonetheless, he was vocally excellent, with impressive low notes.
The smaller roles were well performed, but there were no standouts. Italian tenor Piero Pretti is one of my favourite Italian tenors of his generation. Highly appreciated in Ernani in Valencia and in I vespri siciliani in Milan last season, Pretti sang “Di rigori armato” beautifully but in an inappropriate style. This ought to be sung like an aria antica rather than a romantic Italian opera aria.
Der Rosenkavalier premiered in 1911, three years before the start of WWI, which effectively erased the venerable Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Hapsburg dynasty. The Empire was in its twilight since its defeat by an ascending Prussia in 1866. The years between 1867 and 1914 were particularly fertile ones in terms of artistic creativity. Vienna saw the birth of seminal elements of Western modernity, in music (Mahler, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg); in painting (Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele); psychology (Freud); philosophy (Wittgenstein); literature (Zweig, Schnitzler); and in witticism (Karl Kraus). Welcoming, timelessly seductive, secular and cosmopolitan, Vienna was the ideal setting for such innovation.
Der Rosenkavalier is set in the era of Empress Maria Theresa (1717‑1780) as an homage to a once glorious Empire. However, it’s also a biting critique of the rigid hierarchy of an aristocratic class that didn’t easily adapt to the effervescence of a now increasingly multiethnic Vienna. Both in Der Rosenkavalier and in Arabella, his subsequent collaboration with Strauss, Hofmannsthal evokes the ethnicities that comprised Vienna and the Empire, and this, in sharp contrast to its homogeneously German rival Prussia. Octavian, Count Rofrano, is in all likelihood Italian. The cunning Valzacchi and his niece are certainly Italian. Baron Ochs, the Marschallin’s country cousin, hails from Carinthia, on the border with Slovenia. Her husband, the Feldmarschall, is away from Vienna hunting game in the Croatian woods (actually in Vojvodina, in present day Serbia).
Harry Kupfer’s production was visually delightful. The action was transposed to fin de siècle Vienna. This rendered the nostalgia of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto almost too excessive. Moreover, as much of the text is related to the epoch of Empress Maria Theresa, much of the action was implausible, and the text therefore incoherent. Despite the Hapburg’s conservatism, the difference between eighteenth century and late nineteenth/ early twentieth century Vienna is considerable.
As a lover of Vienna, I will remember this staging as a love letter from Kupfer to Vienna. Act I opens in the Marschallin’s bedroom, with a magnificent view of the Hofburg, the principal imperial palace and winter residence. The view changes to show Minoritenkirche and other monuments of the city. At the end of the act, as the Marschallin reflects on the passage of time and her own aging, the view changes to a gray autumnal panorama.
In Act II, we see an anxious Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin, the duena or dame de Compagnie of Sophie von Faninal, on a balcony using binoculars to observe the arrival of the young Octavian to present the silver rose. This is a smart clin d’œil of the eagerness of the upwardly mobile Faninal household to rub shoulders and marry into the old nobility. The initial view is again the Hofburg, but for the presentation of the rose, the background view is the Jugendstil Palmenhaus, a posh brasserie with a palm court. When Baron Ochs misbehaves towards Sophie and when his servants go on a rampage molesting von Faninal’s female staff, the background images are from the interior of Kunsthistorisches Museum with an à propos Renaissance painting of the Rape of the Sabines.
In Act III, we see the Wurstelprater, the amusement park in the Prater with its famous Riesenrad. The establishment where Baron Ochs plans to have his tryst with Mariandel is Zum Walfisch, with its iconic whale preserved in the Wienmuseum. The costumes for the hired intruders that bother Ochs at every attempt at seduction are colourful and festive, evocative of Carnival. Toward the end of the act, the Marschallin leaves with von Faninal in a motorcar driven by her African valet, Mohammed. Kupfer chose to make the latter an adolescent, instead of a child, around the same age as Octavian. As written in the libretto, the opera ends with the valet rushing in to collect a handkerchief the Marschallin had dropped. The valet holds the handkerchief passionately and breathes in the Marschallin’s perfume. Kupfer insinuates that the Marschallin’s next lover may be the valet, though such a transgression would break every rule of the aristocracy, even for an Empire drawing its last breath.
One retains four indelible memories from this production: Petrenko’s masterful musical direction (a Strauss opera is an excellent choice for a conductor to impress); Stoyanova’s moving portrayal of the Marschallin, conveying her nobility and stoicism; Devieilhe’s ethereal high notes and elegant demeanor as Sophie; and Groissböck’s antics as Ochs. Visually, the images of the Austrian capital were magnificent. This was a fresh approach, reminding us of the splendour of the city and the lost Empire where such a charade could have taken place. If only Kupfer hadn’t limited his innovation to visual marvels and had peered deeper into the mysteriously intoxicating undercurrents of the action. The libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, one of the greatest ever, contains so much more than Kupfer offered.
Ossama el Naggar
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