Mad about the boy
Levine is confident and animated throughout the performance, which is spread out over two DVDs. Of course, Levine is always an excellent musician, but this Rosenkavalier reminded me how exciting he and the Met orchestra can be when they throw themselves wholeheartedly into a piece as rich and moving as this one.
It’s entirely possible that the reason Levine appears so excited throughout the performance is that he’s directing one of his favorites, Tatiana Troyanos, in a role that is an absolute triumph for her. She meets the vocal demands of the punishing role of Octavian with conviction and style, performing every line of the score – in which she must appear almost continuously – with total, in-the-moment investment and inspiring musical intelligence.
Her acting is flawless, boyish or heartbroken or flirtatious or resigned as appropriate, always in service of the music and the story, and always with a gorgeous, innate dignity. (OK, she does have one unfortunate lapse in craft, in the scene that you and I both know you’ll be skipping every time you re-watch this DVD: the twenty-seven hour Mrs. Doubtfire homage between Octavian and Baron Ochs that Misters Strauss and Hofmannsthal sadistically included at the beginning of the otherwise sublime third act.)
The Marschallin is the ostensible star part of Der Rosenkavalier, and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is excellent in the role without ever quite being exciting. Her singing is beautiful and exact; unfortunately, so is her acting. She plays one note throughout the opera (tragic inevitability, with excellent manners) that is dramatically satisfying but missing that element of the unexpected that infuses a truly legendary diva interpretation. The Monologue in Act I is perhaps her best moment, with an infusion of what looks like genuine emotion adding to a musically excellent performance.
Judith Blegen as the ingénue Sophie (who is, awkwardly, a year older than Te Kanawa as the middle-aged Marschallin) is somewhat undone by close-ups that make her girlish affectations—fluttering eyelids, poetry-recital handclasps—suggest prissiness rather than naivete. Her singing is radiant and youthful, however, and she shines in Sophie’s big moments – the presentation of the rose, the final, bemused love duet, and the spectacular trio with Te Kanawa and Troyanos.
Kurt Moll lumbers through the thankless role of Baron Ochs in the typical fashion, singing his waltz music with power and humor but never suggesting that the character has anything to add to the opera beyond the most obvious sort of comic relief. The production also features Luciano Pavarotti as the Italian Singer, who delivers his aria beautifully without once looking up from his songbook, giving the whole cameo the feeling of a contractual obligation. The production, by Nathaniel Merrill, is tasteful and adequate, perhaps a bit less musty-looking on the DVD than when seen at the Met in recent seasons.
Quibbles and cross-dressing comedy aside, this DVD has enough glorious moments to recommend it to those who are passionate about Troyanos, Levine, or the opera itself (if you’re the world’s biggest Blegen fan, I assume you’ve already pre-ordered your copy).
One moment in each act is absolutely perfect: the Marschallin and Octavian’s mournful Act 1 exchanges about the passage of time, with Troyanos’s deep-set eyes adding a layer of sad wisdom to Octavian’s youthful fears; the unexpected flowering of passion between young lovers during the presentation of the rose in Act 2; and the perfect Act 3 trio, where all three women stand before us in a line – the one with her whole life ahead of her, the one with her best years behind her, and the one torn between them. We know, looking at them and listening, that if we haven’t been all three of those people yet, we just need to give it some time.
All these reissues from the Met make me wonder if other theaters have such a rich back catalog of telecasts which they could make available to the public. Are there sites online which would show us what has been telecast from Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, and La Scala over the years?
Regarding the term ‘note-spinning’, Strauss himself supposedly used it in referring to the difficulties he had in finishing ‘Die Frau Ohne Schatten’, comparing its ending with ‘Der Rosenkavalier’. He wrote to Hofmannsthal: ‘No matter how I rack my brain--and I’m toiling really hard, sifting and sifting--my heart’s only half in it, and once the head has to do the major part of the work you get a breath of academic chill (what my wife very rightly calls ‘note-spinning’) which no bellows can ever kindle into a real fire.’
The word in the German original is the rather more neutral ‘musizieren’.
Fascinating, Fox, though the tone of ‘musizieren’ seems different — somehow more assertive — than ‘note-spinning’, don’t you think? I think the first time I saw ‘note-spinning’ was in a review by Strauss expert (nay, fanatic!) Michael Kennedy.
Monty, it’s a tricky one. I suspect ‘note-spinning’ was the word that people felt best summed up the loss of direction and tendency to pad-out that Ernest Newman complained about in Strauss as early as Elektra, and clearly it was seen by the translators of the correspondence as the nearest equivalent to ‘musizieren’.
I’d say that the German word has clearer implications of very solid technique but with a tendency to fall back on that technique when inspiration flags. I think it’s maybe a cultural thing, and I’m sure many a non-German composer would have given their right arm to be able to spin notes with the same skill as Strauss (as I think a previous poster hinted), but given Strauss’s cultural position, as Wagner’s hier taking on the mantle of German Music etc. etc., such technical brilliance needed to be backed up with inspiration.
Strauss made himself particularly vulnerable to such criticism when he so publicly renounced metaphysical pretensions in his music — he more or less admitted that he was driving his music rather than pretending to have its progress dictated by some mystical force (Schopenhauer’s Will, or whatever) so he alone was to blame went it waffled on unnecessarily.
And speaking of waffling on unnecessarily…
But Wagner was the biggest note spinner of all time, if it comes to that. 15 and a half hours to go from E flat to D in the Ring! Plot wise the same. He would have been writing for afternoon soaps if he was alive today,like Days of our Lives and Coronation Street.
Next episode’s Announcement:.”AND….find out about two of Daddy’s children being into incest (and which two!)…. Who stole the gold?….Who is also bonking Auntie? ….And who is the pyromaniac? As well see the girls having a merry time driving their hearse sky gyro-copter. And don’t forget of course, you can buy the theme music from the show at all good shopping centers, right now.”
Very interesting indeed. When you listen to Strauss conducting Strauss, you also hear his refusal to be pretentious about his music. That is probably why I love these recordings so much.