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Capriccio
|
Composer |
Richard Strauss |
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Librettist |
Clemens Krauss |
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Venue and Dates |
Palais Gamier 24 June 2004 If you know of other dates we would appreciate you letting us know by emailing webmaster@geraldfinley.info |
|
Conductor |
Günter Neuhold / Ulf Schirmer |
|
Production |
Director: Robert Carsen |
|
Performers |
Countess: Renee Fleming Italian Soprano: Anna Maria Dell'Oste Clairon: Anne Sofie von Otter Flamand: Rainer Trost Olivier: Gerald Finley Monsieur Taupe: Robert Tear Italian Tenor: Barry Banks Count: Dietrich Henschel La Roche: Franz Hawlata Major-domo: Petri Lindroos Orchestre de I 'Opera National de Paris |
Click the photo below for details of a DVD associated with this production
What the critics say
Opera (Peter Reed), April 2006
This Robert Carsen production of Strauss's last opera was staged at the Palais Gamier in the summer of 2004. It marked the end of Hugues Gall's directorship of the Paris Opera; it was also the production that the conductor Christian Thielemann left without explanation. He is ably replaced on this recording by Ulf Schirmer.
Francois Roussillon's film makes a stab at a sort of 'special edition' of the production. There is a long shot during the sextet of the Countess swanning through the sumptuous lobby of the Garnier as if she owns the place (which, of course, for the purposes of this opera she does), and she achieves the miracle of being in two places at once so that she can watch herself singing the closing scene. The film at this point, by the way, makes it clear that this is the start of the opera devised in honour of her birthday, which fits the play-within-a-play scenario but not the action sequence as a whole.
Fans of Renee Fleming, who plays the Countess, will probably think they've died and gone to heaven. She looks gorgeous and carries Anthony Powell's I 940s gowns as to the manner born. The voice is opulent and seamless, although Capriccio's conversational style is not as far up her street as the long legato lines; even here her pitch occasionally becomes unfocused. The camera caresses her, and, always ready for her close-up, she repays the compliment with delightful and natural acting - although she overdoes her mysterious little smilebut she doesn't quite get the sense of amused aristocratic detachment that Soderstrom had to spare in this role.
Franz Hawlata is magnificent as La Roche, and more than that in his great hymn to the producer's (and Strauss's) art. As Olivier and Flamand, Gerald Finley and Rainer Trost are touching and involving as the words-and-music- and love-rivals- the gathering shadows of dismay that flicker over Finley's face when his sonnet acquires new, musical life is a minor masterpiece of acting. Anne Sofie von Otter gives her considerable all as Clairon, a truthful and funny send-up of the extremes of actorly attitudes; her silent, leather-coated SS companion places Carsen's production around the time the opera was written (1942) in Paris during the German occupation, and hints at collaboration. Dietrich Henschel is a finely sung Count, whose robust attitudes to art are a convincing foil to his sister's more delicate sensibilities.
The production is full of detail - the filming of the moment when Strauss's big tune is first heard is particularly well handled-and there are some really striking theatrical coups, as when doors at the back of the stage of the Countess's private theatre slide open to reveal her salon, a replica of the Garnier's upper foyer, and during the Moonlight Music, after which the whole set is spectacularly struck, and the Countess's souper is! servier!. Carsen lets no opportunity slip for a sumptuous expression of Strauss's web of sentiment and self-congratulation, and the magic works; for two and a half hours, and for a long time afterwards, this fine discussion of aesthetics, of whether music or words have the ascendancy, has never seemed more crucial.