Richard Strauss described his 1924 opera Intermezzo as “a bourgeois comedy”, and Garsington Opera certainly delivers the bourgeois experience. Wormsley, the company’s home, is owned by Mark Getty; evening dress is all but de rigueur; and the extended picnic interval mimics Glyndebourne. In a welcome concession to non-bourgeois taste, Bruno Ravella’s production is sung in Andrew Porter’s English translation.
Strauss based the opera on a mishap in his own marriage. His famously histrionic wife Pauline intercepted a letter that seemed to suggest her husband was having an affair. Incensed, she threatened divorce, only calming down when Strauss proved that the letter had gone to the wrong man, at the wrong address.
There’s comic potential there, and Strauss provided plenty of lovely music (efficiently conducted here by Jac van Steen), much of it for the orchestral intermezzos which cover scene changes; but who goes to opera for the scene changes?
As Storch, the wronged husband, Mark Stone sings clearly although with little warmth, but Mary Dunleavy excels as his wife Christine. In the end, though, the comedy is simply too thin, too comfortable — too bourgeois, in fact.
Until July 9; garsingtonopera.org
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