Waltzing to mass appeal

Der Rosenkavalier is one of the great German operas but, HEATH LEES reports, it hasn't always been well received.

In the 90-odd years since Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier had its first performance in Dresden, it has had some pretty cavalier treatment, sometimes even downright abuse.

Stravinsky, for example, pronounced himself disgusted with its heavy Romantic music, adding the acid-drop postscript that he preferred Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

Strauss had centred his opera on mid 18th-century Vienna, but when it moved there from Dresden, the Viennese critics disowned it, calling it a banal farce and a cheap burlesque set to music. It irked them that Strauss had used the Viennese waltz at every opportunity, writing new ones whenever possible, and squeezing every drop of sentimental tunefulness out of its lilting three-in-a-bar.

Historically, the waltz hadn't appeared in Vienna until well after the mid 18th-century, so the Viennese scolded the German composer for his apparent ignorance and his sugary tunes and harmonies, which they said were not real waltzes.

Closer to our own times, critics have accused Strauss of having gone commercial, turning away from his earlier, more challenging operas such as Salome and Elektra, in favour of this cheap, toe-tapping comedy with music.

Strangely, the most cavalier dismissal of the opera was by its own creators: Strauss, and also his librettist, the famous Austrian poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

Like Stravinsky, Hofmannsthal was to accuse Strauss of writing no more than an operetta and of smothering his text with heavy music ... destroying utterly the purpose of the words. For him, the third act, where the oafish Baron Ochs is revealed as a philandering rogue, was a farce.

Strauss never disagreed publicly with Hofmannsthal's views, and once admitted that much of the dialogue was lost in this opera which he described as a string of scenically effective highlights.

As a famous and expensive conductor of Der Rosenkavalier , Strauss was again extremely cavalier. He would often leave every rehearsal to the opera-house staff conductors, appearing in front of the orchestra only when the lights had gone down for the first public performance. Despite many requests, he never recorded the work.

Thankfully, the public loved Der Rosenkavalier from the first note of its Dresden premiere on January 26, 1911.

The work ran there for an unprecedented 53 performances, and the railway service put on special Rosenkavalier trains from Berlin for those who thought the work's eroticism would ban it from the Kaiser's capital city of Berlin.

They were, in fact, nearly correct, since many cuts were made, the Kaiser didn't attend the first Berlin performance, and when he was finally persuaded to go, he said stiffly, "That is not the sort of music for me."

The Italians, who see themselves as the inventors of opera, tried hard not to like the work at its first Milan performance, two months after its Dresden opening. Act 2 was greeted with catcalls and boos by an audience who shouted that waltzes were for ballet, not opera.

In Act 3 the farce was rudely received, but when the Field-Marshall's wife arrived as a sublime prima donna and the closing trio gave way to the last ravishing duet, the Italians were spellbound, and applauded wildly.

Der Rosenkavalier's victorious path spread through Europe and beyond, making it one of the great German operas and obligatory for every world-class opera-house. Even in 1945, with anti-German feeling rife, Britain's new Covent Garden Opera Company included it as one of its first post-war operas.

Der Rosenkavalier is the public's darling because it has unforgettable set pieces, such as the famous presentation of the rose which opens Act 2, with spine-tingling music as the young Sophie falls in love with the Rosenkavalier, who is supposed to win her for his master Baron Ochs, but falls in love with her himself.

The opera has the most brilliant orchestration, big and Straussian in every bar, with eloquent wind parts, pulsating strings, and overwhelming brass entries.

There's a gender-hopping Octavian, the last of the great pants roles for a woman dressed as a man which gives Strauss the excuse for merging three soprano voices into the famously beautiful final scene.

There's the flavour of the waltz everywhere, with unforgettable tunes that refuse to be shaken off, and there's the frank eroticism of the work, with post-Wagner waves of sexually descriptive music, especially the graphic lovemaking-music of the prelude, which caused a scandal at the time.

Lastly there's the role of the Marschallin, whose beauty is fading with time (she gets up at night to stop the clocks), and who gives up her lover to Sophie, as a way of showing the depth of her own love for him. It's a role that has crowned every soprano's career, from Lotte Lehmann, through Elizabeth Schwarzkopf to Kiri Te Kanawa.

In the end, audiences can never be cavalier over Der Rosenkavalier. They're too busy laughing at its comedy and shedding tears at its tragedy.

The last great aristocratic comedy of manners, it belongs to a faded period, but thanks to the musical magic of Strauss, it confounds its critics, and speaks to every age.

When the conductor comes out, brings down the baton and throws his arm out to the horns, you know instinctively you're in for an evening of sheer delight. Not all operas make you feel like that.

* Der Rosenkavalier, with Yvonne Kenny, Alan Ewing, Louise Winter and Richard Greagar, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, as part of the New Zealand Festival, Feb 23, 25, 27, March 1, 3.