Germany R. Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier: Soloists, Youngsters’s Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (refrain director: Vinzenz Weissenburger), Staatsopernchor Berlin (refrain director: Gerhard Polifka), Staatskapelle Berlin / Joana Mallwitz (conductor). Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 2.1.2024. (MB)

First seen in 2020, André Heller’s manufacturing of Der Rosenkavalier, ‘in collaboration with’ Wolfgang Schilly, is one thing of an enigma. Not solely does there look like no overriding idea, nor even sense of what the work could be about; there additionally appears to be little, if something, in the best way of route of the characters. There are putting set designs from Xenia Hausner and equally putting costumes from Arthur Arbesser, though the latter dart about confusingly in terms of chronology; insofar as one can discern any thought, it comes from the previous — and that actually appears to be it. On coming into the theatre, we’re confronted in lieu of a curtain with a playbill for a 1917 profit efficiency for battle widows and orphans in Vienna. I assume that has some relevance to what unfolds, although battle and its penalties are nowhere to be seen. Maybe the Marschallin is meant to face in some relationship to Princess Marie Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, beneath whose auspices the efficiency is listed as going down. The costumes, to this untutored eye, counsel one thing later, maybe progressively so, the setting European japonisme. (My coronary heart went out to Michael Kim as Pet Vendor: ‘orientalism’ doesn’t start…) Within the second act, Klimt’s Beethoven frieze and ostentatious vulgarity do an affordable job in evoking one thing extra updated for Faninal’s palace, though dressing Faninal solely in gold overeggs the pudding to the purpose of exploding it. Fairly why the third act is ready in an enormous palm home, I do not know, however Heller apparently has ‘by no means understood’ why Hofmannsthal set it the place he did. Maybe he might need tried more durable, however regardless of.

There are occasional aperçus and likewise causes for bemusement. For instance of the previous, a full-grown Mohammed’s lingering over the Marschallin’s handkerchief on the shut comes as a pleasant (and even nasty) shock; he clearly loves her as a lot as the remainder of us. In regards to the latter, I do not know why a group of opera home crew stroll on, in T-shirts saying ‘Staatsoper Unter den Linden’, to mob the Italian singer; such metatheatrical (?) presentism is just not evident elsewhere. None of this does any explicit hurt; by the identical token, none of it substitutes for an precise manufacturing, its considering by or its accomplishment, though it would effectively have supplied a gorgeous if barely arbitrary mise-en-scene. If I stay a way off declaring ‘Come again Otto Schenk, all is forgiven’, I may definitely forgive on this event somebody for saying so. At any price, it was unclear why it ought to have been thought crucial to exchange Nicolas Brieger’s staging I noticed in 2009 (overview click on right here) with this lavish Berlin successor.

Joana Mallwitz unquestionably introduced extra in the best way of concepts, in addition to higher familiarity with the work — and with opera extra broadly. (One might need thought such qualities sine quibus non, but on this courageous new world through which anybody apart from an opera director could be an opera director, seemingly not.) The Preludes to the primary act and the opening of the second have been attacked with nice vitality, vividly pictorial or not less than amenable to vivid pictorialisation. The Introduction and far of the Pantomime to the third have been spellbindingly Mendelssohnian in lightness and stability of textures; I’ve by no means heard them fairly like that however ought to be eager to take action once more. Tempi tended to broaden because the acts proceeded, and there have been occasions after I felt the shortage of one thing a bit extra classical (or certainly nearer to Strauss’s personal conducting), however there are far worse issues than expansiveness in Der Rosenkavalier. At any price, the Staatskapelle Berlin appeared to reply with enthusiasm to her strategy and, if I’ve heard a higher vary of kaleidoscopic color drawn from the orchestra right here, there remained a lot to admire.

So too was there within the singing. It appears solely yesterday I used to be making the acquaintance of Julia Kleiter’s artistry as Pamina; now she is the Marschallin, and a distinguished one at that. Her efficiency confirmed equal sensitivity to verbal that means and deeper emotional currents, neither mistaking opera for Lieder nor portray with too broad a brush. Nor did she flip Strauss into Wagner, drawing on appreciable Mozartian expertise in addition to pure, becoming stage presence. Plight, grace, and reassertion of management have been shifting certainly. Marina Prudenskaya’s Octavian was fruitier of tone than one usually hears, although none the more serious for that. She captured his final cluelessness to a tee, and likewise supplied due bearing for the position. The Faninals have been hardly favoured by the manufacturing, however Golda Schultz’s unusually headstrong Sophie proved extra likeable than traditional. Roman Trekel made a lot of his phrases particularly as her father. Günther Groissböck was audibly ailing, but nonetheless supplied a vigorous and much from off-the-peg efficiency as Ochs. His command of Bavarian got here in helpful for baronial rusticity. There have been no weak hyperlinks on this solid; for me, Katharina Kammerloher’s vigorous Annina, Anna Samuil’s stern but caring Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin, and Johan Krogius’s double flip as clever Main-domo to Herr von Faninal and spirited (and much from unintelligent) third-act Landlord stood out. Nobody listening to these performances may moderately have been upset; if solely there had been extra of a manufacturing with which to interact.

Mark Berry

Manufacturing:
Director – André Heller
Assistant director – Wolfgang Schilly
Set designs – Xenia Hausner, Nanna Neudeck
Costumes – Arthur Arbesser, Onka Allmayer-Beck
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Video – Günter Jäckle, Philip Hillers

Forged included:
The Marschallin – Julia Kleiter
Baron Ochs – Günther Groissböck
Octavian – Marina Prudenskaya
Herr von Faninal – Roman Trekel
Sophie – Golda Schultz
Marianne Leitmetzerin – Anna Samuil
Valzacchi – Karl-Michael Ebner
Annina – Katharina Kammerloher
Police Officer – Friedrich Hamel
The Marschallin’s Main-domo – Florian Hoffmann
Faninal’s Main-domo – Johan Krogius
Home Servant – Jens-Eric Schulze
Notary – Dionyios Avgerinos
Landlord – Johan Krogius
Singer – Andrés Moreno Garcia
Milliner – Regina Koncz
Vendor of Pets – Michael Kim
Leopold – Oliver Chwat
Lackeys, Waiters – Sooongoo Lee, Felipe Martin, Insoo Hwoang, Thomas Vogel
Mohammed – Joseph Umoh