Richard Strauss’ Arabella represents a kind of tipping point in the great composer’s career, in the annals of German opera and, coincidentally, in where it sits in the Hungarian State Opera’s repertoire. Contemporary press referred to the 1932 comedy as “the very last Romantic opera” and it was Strauss’ final collaboration with his long time librettist partner, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, an attempt to recreate the success of their 1911 hit, Der Rosenkavalier, “without any self-repetition”. Received with “lukewarm indifference” at its 1934 Budapest premiere, it disappeared from the company’s repertoire until the current production was unveiled in 2012. Now in 2024, Sylvie Gábor directs a major revival of Géza Bereményi’s original conception.
As the production’s conductor, Péter Halász, mentions in the programme “there are certain works that cannot be separated from their original settings. Arabella is one of them.” This is certainly borne out in this staging with its echt mid-19th-century Viennese costumes, opulent mirrored and be-chandeliered ballroom and unquestioning of “period” notions about marrying off one’s daughters to the highest bidder. Gábor departs from convention in her treatment of the Fiakermilli, one of Strauss and von Hofmannsthal’s more bizarre creations, who pops out of nowhere in the Act 2 ball to entertain guests with high coloratura fireworks. As the director notes, the character’s real life inspiration, Emily Tuček, “became a symbol of eroticism and passion, and was registered as a courtesan by the police at the time.” But would even as subversive a figure as Tuček have consented to the embarrassing crotch and boob-grabbing we saw here? This might have worked in a production less tied to the original period, but her twerking and posse of vaguely S&M minions seemed out of place. Nevertheless, soprano Rita Rácz was game and nailed her virtuoso vocal acrobatics with clean, penetrating tone.
Ultimately, this opera’s success heavily depends on appropriate principal casting. Soprano Polina Pasztircsák is an almost ideal Arabella, her creamy soprano projecting beautifully throughout the role’s demanding range, as well as in its copious parlando passages. In Act 1, Pasztircsák didn’t shy away from Arabella’s less attractive, capricious tendencies, and later made it very clear she wasn’t content to be her impoverished family’s chattel. This was a fully satisfying account I would love to hear again.
Arabella, and her family’s, saviour comes in the form of the slightly unsophisticated, but hugely wealthy Croatian landowner, Mandryka, who has fallen in love with a portrait of Arabella sent by her father to his uncle, also confusingly-named Mandryka. One of the summits of the Romantic baritone repertoire, the role requires almost Wotan-like reserves of stamina and vocal range. It can also be a gift for any singing actor able to convey an equally large range of emotion from volatile jealousy to heartfelt contrition. Csaba Szegedi offers the right kind of burnished, heroic vocal colour but at this stage, lacks a certain degree of textual and physical engagement with the character to be entirely convincing.
The Waldner family is so on the edge of financial ruin they can only afford to put one daughter, Arabella, on the marriage market. Her sister, Zdenka, has therefore lived most of her life disguised as a boy and in soprano Laura Topolánszky, the company presents another near-ideal exemplar. Tall and willowy, she was entirely convincing in this latter-day operatic pants role and her gorgeous, focused instrument was infused with all sorts of pent-up emotion. Zdenka, it turns out, is in love with Matteo, one of her elder sister’s several other “official” suitors. Sung by tenor István Horváth with exciting, pinging tone, as well as what was probably the most idiomatic German in this cast, Matteo unexpectedly ends up with Zdenka at the opera’s conclusion after much intrigue involving forged letters and secret hotel room trysts.
The parents in this shady family were well characterised by bass László Szvétek and mezzo-soprano Andrea Szántó. He did not slide into caricature even when gleefully peeling large banknotes out of his future son-in-law Mandryka’s bulging wallet. Szántó, the company’s current Carmen and Kundry, also had her moment at the ball, vaguely promising one of her daughter’s suitors a possible future tête-à-tête.
Dramaturgically, Arabella may not be top drawer Strauss and von Hofmannsthal, but its key duets are certainly among the pair’s finest moments. Act 1’s “Aber der Richtige”, with its exquisite rising harmonies, was meltingly sung by Pasztircsák and Topolánszky as they ruminated on Arabella and Zdenka’s ideal kind of man.
In the end, it is Arabella’s virtuosic score that has kept it in the active repertoire, played here by the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra with utter authority under Halász. Special mention must go to the concertmaster for their several haunting solos that sum up the allure of this last gasp of German Romanticism.
