Review

A likable and polished Rosenkavalier from WNO - review

Peter van Hulle as Valzacci​, Brindley Sherratt as Baron Ochs, and Madeleine Shaw as Annina, in Welsh National Opera's Der Rosenkavalier
Peter van Hulle as Valzacci​, Brindley Sherratt as Baron Ochs, and Madeleine Shaw as Annina, in Welsh National Opera's Der Rosenkavalier  Credit: Bill Cooper

Der Rosenkavalier works at two levels: the farcical intrigue through which the dashing young aristocrat Octavian outsmarts the boorishly countrified Baron Ochs to win the rich bourgeois Sophie von Faninal; and the deeper human comedy of the worldly-wise Marschallin’s renunciation of her extra-marital affair with Octavian, shot through with her awareness of the transience of sexual love and life itself.

Olivia Fuchs’s staging – set in the early 20th century, as is now customary – has no problem rendering the first level in refreshingly simple style, allowing the plot to unfold with unexaggerated humour and failing only to indicate the crucial distinction between the Marschallin’s established wealth and the newly acquired millions being splashed around by the arriviste Faninals.

Rebecca Evans as the Marsch​allin, in Welsh National Opera's Der Rosenkavalier
Rebecca Evans as the Marsch​allin, in Welsh National Opera's Der Rosenkavalier  Credit: Bill Cooper

But she can’t resist a temptation to overload the opera’s second level. What should be gently implied is here crushingly overstated, as cascades of sand intermittently drop from the flies to remind us that time passes, and a spectral elderly Marschallin haunts the stage staring wistfully at her younger self. The latter is an irritatingly redundant concept that scarcely reflects the hard-nosed resilience of the character that the librettist Hofmannsthal so subtly created.

Strauss’s music is in safer hands. Highly wrought and allusive, ostentatiously sophisticated and brilliant, the score presents a huge challenge that WNO’s new Music Director Tomás Hanus meets with remarkable flair and confidence. He and his terrific orchestra don’t miss a trick in a reading that is sumptuous and expansive as well as vivacious and witty. Tempi were elegantly judged throughout: even the relatively dull patches of Act 2 didn’t drag. It seldom gets better than this.

Welsh National Opera's Der Rosenkavalier 
Welsh National Opera's Der Rosenkavalier  Credit: Bill Cooper

Rebecca Evans made a promising debut as the Marschallin. Although acting the grande dame doesn’t come naturally to her, she presents a sympathetic personality and sings with grace and feeling, launching the great trio with tone of tear-jerking purity. More subtle and forceful inflection of the text will doubtless come with experience.

A polished and competent Canadian mezzo-soprano Lucia Cervoni presented a plausible Octavian, if one without much brio or personality. More arresting were the delicious Louise Alder as an adorably ardent Sophie and in particular Brindley Sherratt as a Baron Ochs quite brutally repellent in his spivvy venality but never caricatured and always crisply projected. This generally likeable and well-rehearsed production also yielded several sharply etched cameos – Madeleine Shaw’s Annina might be singled out for special mention.  

Until June 17, then at the Birmingham Hippodrome (0844 338 5000), from July 1. Tickets: 029 2063 6464; wno.org.uk

 

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