Conductor, Lothar Koenigs; Production, David Marton; Set Design, Christian Friedländer; Costume Design, Pola Kardum; Lighting, Henning Streck. Die Gräfin, Diana Damrau; Der Graf, Michael Nagy; Flamand, Pavol Breslik; Olivier, Vito Priante; La Roche, Kristinn Sigmundsson; Die Schauspielerin Clairon, Tanja Ariane Baumgartner; Monsieur Taupe, Toby Spence
I have never heard Capriccio live and I thought this looked like a good cast, headed by Diana Damrau and with our own Toby Spence taking the role of the prompter. It’s a 50 min trek from my hotel to the Prinzregententheater so I arrived, on this very hot day, rather sweaty and uncomfortable. I was thinking that here in Munich I am only 600 miles or so by road from the Ukrainian border, or 1000 miles from Kyiv, and everywhere in Europe at present there is evidence of increasing climate change. The other works I have seen and heard during my trip to Munich and Leipzig have addressed important aspects of the human condition, and created new perspectives on them. By contrast the subject matter of Capriccio – do words or music matter more in opera – does not, really, address those fundamental human concerns. You might say it’s inherently trivial……..plus it’s not, as a work for the theatre, in the same league as the great Hofmannsthal operas: it’s got too many words, people talk/sing too much and there’s not enough action. The cleverness of this production is that, by setting it in the 1930’s, and having – see below – some definite Nazi references – it does ask questions about the piece that wouldn’t normally get asked
The set was essentially a vertical cut-through section of a theatre – half a stage, half a set of stalls and half a surrounding set of walls. The Countess and Count move between a box on one of the walls, the auditorium and the stage. The stage also provides space for some of the conversations between Flamand, Olivier, the Countess, Count and others. The auditorium walls maybe look as though they have seen better days. In addition to the unfolding of the various love efforts by Flamand and Oliver, and the overall plot, there is something else happening in the stage auditorium. M. Taupe, the prompter, is dressed in a long faun mackintosh, and wears glasses; he is writing constantly in his note book. At first we see him inspecting and measuring a ballerina, then he’s doing the same with a couple of the ballerinas (see picture – here more obviously measuring noses) and some other people, and after this inspection they are sent out of the theatre as outcasts, marched off by M. Taupe. He tries from the prompt box to listen in on the conversations of the Count and Countess. During the final glorious soliloquy by the Countess, surely one of the most beautiful 15 minutes in all music, he is lurking in the shadows of some potted plants. And on the final chord, the lights are suddenly switched on in the ‘stage’ auditorium and we see 10 men, identically dressed to M. Taupe, in all the boxes looking on threateningly. In her final soliloquy, the Countess is addressing someone who I think is one of the ballerinas who was sent off by M. Taupe, an older, weakened, saddened, maybe grieving woman. Finally also, as the Countess sings her soliloquy there is a lady (I may have been imagining this, but I don’t think so) in one of the boxes being served coffee who repeatedly takes it in a way that, by means of light and shadow, creates a fair sideways view of Adolf Hitler. So, there is clearly a commentary here which connects this work with the difficult issue of Strauss and the Third Reich, and the timing of the first performance – 1943. It relates the work to the removal of Jewish artists and performers from German culture after 1933, and Strauss’ role in that for a time as the President of the Reichskammer for music (till, to be fair, he was sacked by Goebbels for not whole-heartedly following the Nazi line).
In many ways this was the finest of all the performances I have seen in the last 8 days in Germany. Not a weak link in the cast, intelligent direction and immaculate performances. Unfortunately I can’t say how much more resonance and reinforcing connection there was between the text and the 1930’s/NSDAP slant which this approach was proposing, because the combination of lighting on stage, the fact I was in the penultimate back row and maybe small typescript meant that I couldn’t read the surtitles which – as always with the Bayerische Oper – are in German and English. Obviously I have listened to the work on record and I know the outline of the plot but it meant that I probably missed a lot of the interplay the director intended between what was being sung and his view of the work. So I wasn’t really clear at the time how the NSDAP angle changed the meaning and emotional impact of the Countess’ final soliloquy, or the whole words/music debate. I think I remember the Countess kissing the Jewish older ballerina at the end…….The beauty of the last 15 minutes found its objective correlative on stage not in the plight of the countess, torn between two lovers and words v.music, but in the plight of the Jewish artists and performers who were thrown out of work after 1933 and the terrible fate of many of them , in which Strauss, even with his Jewish daughter in law, who he did his best to protect, was to some extent complicit. But were we being invited to consider the Countess as a cosseted irrelevant aesthete or someone coming to full understanding of what was going on around her? I’m not aure, and maybe that’s as much left hanging in the air as the words/music debate. As a footnote, having had a quick look at the words, I have since realised that the final scene involves the Countess talking to herself in the mirror in the libretto – ‘Do you want to be consumed between two fires? You mirrored image of Madeleine in love – can you advise me, can you help me find the ending for the mirror. Is there one that is not trivial?’, so the Director has cleverly used this idea to have the Countess talk to the Jewish artist (unless it is really Madeleine as an old woman – but I don’t think so, given the two pictures of the lady below – one having her nose measured, one with the Countess). And there is justification in the text for the characterisation of M. Taupe – ‘I am the invisible ruler of a magical world……….Only when I sit in my prompt box does the great wheel of the theatre begin to turn.”
I had forgotten how much gorgeous music there is in this work, and so much of it was toe-curlingly luscious and beautiful that I kept giving myself hugs of pleasure, metaphorically. The orchestra – another part of which was at the same time performing The Nose by Shostakovitch at the National Theatre – played magnificently; there was a stunning horn solo marking the beginning of the Countess’ final 15 minutes. Lothar Koenigs, the conductor, is a name I had heard of as a conductor, though I couldn’t remember where or when – a brief Google reminded me that from 2009 to 2016 he was Music Director at Welsh National Opera.
Diana Damrau was simply stunning. I am amazed that her website said this was her debut in the role – she is an absolute natural for the Countess. Effortlessly beautiful tone, stunning soft singing, lovely silky line, all the projection you could want – this was a simply amazing performance. But all the male principals were strong – though oddly the whole business of the rivalry between Flamand and Olivier seemed to get less and less important as the work went on, and M. Taupe’s monitoring of everyone became more obvious.
The audience cheered and stamped wildly at the end and there were even cheers for the director and his team, an unusual event in the land of regie-theater
I was so focused on going to Parsifal, which I booked first, about a year ago, that I didn’t really look very closely at what else was going on in Munich this July. Had I foregone Parsifal, I could have made a slightly later trip and seen Capriccio, Der Rosenkavalier, Die Schweigsame Frau and Die Frau ohne Schatten, as well as the Cunning Little Vixen. Oh well, another time…..But first another ambition has to be met – to go to the Salzburg Festival!……….That’s for next year or the year after (I am also going to a Mahler Festival in Leipzig in May 2023 covering all the symphonies including Das Lied von der Erde!)
John's musical journey 