With a bouquet of flowers, charm, but no bowler hat: Christian Stückl presents a new ‘Rosenkavalier’ for the Hanover State Opera, which tells its amusing story in a cinematic and colourful way and is therefore very popular with the audience. Stephan Zilias on the podium discovers the score in an exciting new way with a slender, transparent sound.
Profound between the lines, yet ambiguous and insinuating on the surface with its apparent waltz bliss, ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ is also a piece about growing old and the conflict between the generations.
Christian Stückl also demonstrates this: at the beginning of the second act, Sophie steps out of the swimming pool like Romy Schneider once did, only to await her future husband Ochs in a striped bathrobe, who – dressed as an ageing bayuware in a brown leather jacket with thinning hair – has already secured and bought the young girl with a marriage contract before their first meeting. The striped bathrobe had previously been worn by the Feldmarschallin after a night of love with the 17-year-old Octavian. History repeats itself – and Sophie is also threatened with the same fate of a forced marriage for financial reasons. The Marschallin has come to terms with this by having fun with young men when her husband is away.
Word seems to have got around, as the Italian singer (Marco Lee gives a beautifully flowing and melting rendition of the Italienità aria) quite clearly follows her into the bedroom.
Kiandra Howarth plays the Marschallin with the look of a Marlene Dietrich, who could also be a slightly older Marylin Monroe, in a confident, warm but passable way with a tendency towards indifferent intonation.
The ambivalence of the characters and genders, which is already established in the design of Octavian as a female trouser role, continues with this one: Anne Marie Stanley‘s Octavian with a long, glued-on moustache all in black and with a huge bouquet of roses is a kind of homage to Charlie Chaplin’s performance in ‘City Lights’. Unfortunately, Stanley is barely able to bring the main role to life and make it resonate with his very incomprehensible diction and rich, flat intonation.
In Stephan Hageneier‘s set, which could somehow be located as an Ikea unit interior in its bright red and blue stripes, Stückl unravels a cheerful game between the ageing protagonists Ochs and Marschallin, who do not want to let go of their youth. The Marschallin realises it in the end, while the Ochs can only be dissuaded from marrying Sophie by the intrigue in the third act.
Martin Summer sings and plays Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau with passable depth and a rounded intonation that could have done with a little more sharpness. Meredith Wohlgemuth is very convincing as Sophie, bringing the plot and story to life with her flowing soprano and passionate acting. Frank Schneiders‘ Faninal also scores highly with his clear, expressive baritone.
Franziska Giesemann brings a carrying, expressive soprano to the role as the head butcher, while Monika Walerowicz and Philipp Kapeller make a beautifully played out, sleazy pair of scheming mediators Annina – Valzacchi.
However, the discovery of the evening takes place in the pit of the Staatsoper: GMD Stephan Zilias leads the Niedersächsisches Staatsorchester Hannover through the score with virility, transparency and a slender sound. It shimmers, speaks, murmurs and whispers in a rarely heard way in all motivic facets. In this context, the prelude to the third act in particular, with its typical Straussian tonal language of the ‘symphonic poem’, seems much more integrated into the overall context of the music than is otherwise all too often the case in the indulgent, flat waltz bliss. Above all, however, the waltz interludes and melodies are all the more impressive in this interpretation, especially in their actual function of a caricaturing, tongue-in-cheek ambiguity. A marvellous interpretation!
On the director’s credit side, it was possible to convey the ‘comedy for music’ to the audience with comprehensible characterisation. Much laughter during the performance and some final applause for all those involved were evidence of this.