Der Rosenkavalier

Last Wednesday night, I attended my second experience of the Met's HD broadcasts in movie theaters - this was of Der Rosenkavalier. The cast featured Renée Fleming as the Marschallin, Susan Graham as Octavian, and Christine Schäfer as Sophie. (Who cares who the men were!) I own two recordings of the opera (Schwarzkopf-Ludwig-Stich Randall, Te Kanawa-Von Otter-Hendricks), and have seen a live performance at the Met before, but I'll admit that I have generally experienced these more out of an effort to learn more about what all the fuss is about this opera, than for my actual fondness of the music. To be sure, I've found much of the singing in the high points of the opera - the Presentation of the Rose, and the final trio - beautiful, but the underlying orchestration even in those moments has sounded atonal and confusing to me. As a result, I haven't explored a lot of other Strauss, finding myself relatively unmoved by a Met performance of Arabella years ago (even with Te Kanawa playing the title role), and finding only Zerbinetta's aria of interest in Ariadne.

Sitting through the entire HD broadcast of the opera, I have changed my tune a bit on this warhorse. Yes, the whole situation with Baron von Ochs still seems, well, a bit operatic, and un-innovative - must all comedic opera involve shenanigans and trickeries in love? But the Marschallin in particular came alive to me in this performance - complete with genuine tears flowing down Fleming's face in Act I when she portray the moody realization of her character that seems to begin to unveil a deeper and meaning of opera. I also hadn't focused on the details of the Marschallin's text before - for example, I hadn't notice the pivotal point of the Marschallin announcing to her hairdresser that he has made her look old. Seeing the opera in the film format - with the ability to see emotions that would be lost to the viewer in Family Circle, and to read easily the translation - gave me a better understanding of the characters in this opera, which gave me a better understanding of the score. Against the backdrop of deeper layers within the opera, the confusing, non-melodic sounds of the orchestra underneath the beautiful singing seem to make sense by reinforcing the emotional disharmony that the characters experience in the opera. That Sophie first hits one of the highest (perhaps the highest) note in the exquisite final trio, and then hands it off to the Marschallin, who then outlasts the other two women vocally in the trio, seems to underscore her maturity, and related greater comprehension of the emotional events as they have unfolded in the opera.

I have a hunch that I have a very Octavian understanding of this opera. With additional listening, I hope to arrive at a more Marschallin-esque one.