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Opulence and emotion … Opera North’s Der Rosenkavalier.
Opulence and emotion … Opera North’s Der Rosenkavalier. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
Opulence and emotion … Opera North’s Der Rosenkavalier. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

Der Rosenkavalier – eloquently staged revival belies its age

This article is more than 7 years old

Grand Theatre, Leeds
Opera North’s music director Aleksandar Markovic makes a memorably incisive debut in this compelling and admirably cast production

For an opera about the fading evanescence of youth, it’s not insignificant that David McVicar’s production of Strauss’s most opulent creation is already a distant memory at Opera North, where it was last seen 14 years ago. Almost long enough for any male offspring of Octavian’s affair with the Marschallin to be thinking about seducing an older woman of his own.

The revival is eloquently staged by Elaine Tyler-Hall and very satisfyingly cast. The Swedish soprano Ylva Kohlberg rather belies the Marschallin’s concern that she is turning into an old woman, but her first act meditation remains the most poignant expression of menopausal ennui set to music. Fflur Wyn has a delightfully diaphanous tone as Sophie, and Helen Sherman’s Octavian sounds as dashing as he/she looks. Henry Waddington’s rotundly sung, bellicose Baron Ochs deserves everything he gets.

Though the production, which has also been shared between Scottish Opera and ENO, cannot remotely be described as new, it does contain a significant first, as it marks the in-post debut of Opera North’s newly-installed music director Aleksandar Markovic. Most conductors are capable of rising to the great Straussian moments; what’s remarkable is the attentive detail with which Markovic invests the incidental passages where inspiration often flags. The pathos he infuses into the wordless passage in which the Marschallin prepares morning coffee reminds you that it is the last time she and her young lover will ever rise together from the same bed. On this evidence I can’t wait to hear what he does with Mozart.

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