R. Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Metropolitan Opera House, 13.12.2019

I have a friend who likes Richard Strauss but dislikes Der Rosenkavalier. He says it is Strauss’s most overrated work. The first time he told me that, I asked him what about the Marschallin’s monologue, the delivery of the silver rose and the final trio? His answer was “Precisely: you have to endure two hours of cacophony to get 45 minutes of beautiful music”. Of course, I disagree with him, but I understand that he has a point. The great challenge of conducting this score is to integrate both tingle-factor highlights and the Falstaff-like comedy scenes, exactly as the Leitmotiv structure concocted by Richard Strauss and also the mirrored Marschallin/Octavian and Ochs/Sophie situations devised by Hofmannsthal demand. Some conductors achieve that by Marschallinizing the whole opera, most notably Herbert von Karajan in his glamorized melancholy performances with Anna Tomowa-Sintow and Kurt Moll in Salzburg. Others Ochsify the three acts, by keeping things objective and kaleidoscopic as Karl Böhm, most notably in his formidable performances with Christa Ludwig and Tatiana Troyanos also in Salzburg. Both share the same secret ingredient: the Vienna Philharmonic. Some will say Carlos Kleiber could get the best of both worlds, especially in his last recording with Felicity Lott and Kurt Moll. He had the Vienna State Opera Orchestra (i.e., the Vienna Philharmonic’s day job) then.

I don’t know if Simon Rattle shares Karajan’s or Böhm’s credo, but he definitely does not fall into the Carlos Kleiber slot. At the end of act 2, I was about to say that he had to be classified in the Karajan group, for the complex counterpoint of the ensembles in Faninal’s Stadtpalais proved to be beyond his possibilities. And the fact that he does not have the Vienna Philharmonic made it more difficult for him. The Met Orchestra is not the nec plus ultra in terms of clarity of articulation, and its brass section has its bumpy moments. Sir Simon chose forward movement as his Ariadne’s thread in this labyrinthic score, but that often involved blurred orchestral playing, clouded phrasing and unsubtlety. If I could mention a composer in which Simon Rattle is at home this would be Gustav Mahler, whose music – if contemporary to that of R. Strauss (they knew each other, as a matter of fact) – requires an entirely different approach. Here I noticed that Rattle tended to look for a Hauptstimme, invested everything in it and let the myriad of secondary voices fall into place by themselves. That might work in the Lied von der Erde, but unfortunately not here. This is a score that has to be built brick by brick and not by assembling components. On the other hand, act 1 seemed more successful at first – the conductor was able to keep the aural image symphonic, with beautiful interplay between woodwinds and singers, but he had light-voiced soloists (or something like that) and refrained from pressing the turbo button when the music cried for more intensity. A similar effect could have been achieved by a flexible beat, but his one trick was rhythmic regularity. I wondered how the final trio could deliver its full emotional content under these circumstances. It did not. It showed no development in terms of dynamics, tempo or intensity. And then there was the problem with the cast.

It is a tradition to start with the leading soprano and so I’ll speak first of Camilla Nylund, who happened to be the most successful singer this evening. Ms. Nylund’s big lyric soprano, even in its prime, lacked radiance in its high notes. Above the passaggio, it acquires a velvety, floated quality that tends to stay on stage rather than pierce into the auditorium. In the role of the Marschallin, this natural float helped her all the way. Instead of shifting into mezza voce every time she needed to suggest pensiveness, she just had to keep doing her thing. And her middle register has the necessary warmth and plushness to suggest the chic the role really needs. There were moments when one wanted a little bit more pointedness of delivery or presence (the final trio, for instance), but her naturalness had a patrician glow to it and that made do. This Marschallin was above trying to make an impression. This woman was the measure of all things in her world.

I once bought a ticket to see Magdalena Kozena’s Octavian in Berlin but couldn’t make it and had never overcome the feeling of unfinished business until this evening. I feared that the Met might be too big an auditorium for her reedy Mozartian mezzo and my intuition proved to be right. Ms. Kozena is a singer incapable of carelessness – she sings every note and utter every word as if they were the most important thing in the world, but I am not sure if the audience in Family Circle could hear that. When Strauss requires the full orchestra, her low notes were inaudible and her high notes could be hooty or fluttery. When surrounded by chamber-like sonorities, however, she relished in poised phrasing and sounds of instrumental purity. In terms of stage presence, her Octavian was convincingly boyish and aristocratic. Her Mariandl, nevertheless, lacked the necessary tomboy quality. As shown here, the Count Rofrano had a natural talent to walk on high heels.

As Sophie, Golda Schultz displayed absolute ease throughout her whole range. She was hands down the singer with best low notes in the role in my experience live in the theatre. At the same time, she did not have to change any gears to float her high notes in the delivery of the silver rose. She sang from beginning to end with musicianship, abandon and charm. And yet the absence of silvery quality in her voice made her small-scaled and excessively discreet. With such a self-contained Sophie, the final trio sounded like a sundae without the cherry on top. I don’t think either that the role is close to this singer’s personality – although she worked hard to be the damsel in distress, the acting seemed to be build from the outside in rather than inside out.

When Günther Groissböck appeared on stage, I had to adjust my ears to the fact that, even if his voice was firm and solid to the super low notes, it sounded bottled up and lacking resonance. When I saw him sing this role in the Grosses Festspielhouse, it hardly sounded gigantesque, but here it made me wonder if the whole process of becoming a Wotan is really working. Back in Bayreuth in August, my impression was very different. So I would rather consider that he was not in his best night. Curiously, Markus Eiche, who in Bayreuth would never be counted as a forceful baritone, here – through clarity of emission and precision of focus – was the most hearable person on stage.

Der Rosenkavalier is an opera difficult to cast – the many small roles require important voices and I cannot say that I heard something close to efficient this evening. Matthew Polenzani’s Italian Tenor came close – he sang richly and showed amazing breath control, but the tone was far from ingratiating.

I had not seen before this evening Robert Carsen’s 2017 production for the Met, but it looks and sound as the watered down version of his 2004 production for Salzburg, where lots of ideas just hinted at here were fully developed. There, Ochs’s philandering is a façade for a mix of some sort of erectile and moral dysfunction, the Marschallin is a regular of the demimonde shown in act 3 and the ghost of World War I hovers around the opera rather than decorates the last scene. I cannot say I liked Carsen’s first attempt – I found it incoherent and kitsch – but it made sense somehow. The version “for all audiences” is incoherent, kitsch and silly.