Matthias Schulz, lately director of the renowned Staatsoper Under den Linden, Berlin, takes up the reins of the Opernhaus Zurich with a new production of Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s most delectable confection. Hopes are sky-high for Diana Damrau’s debut in the dream role of the Marschallin, a Viennese aristocrat of rare sensual as well as philosophical refinement trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience to a high-ranking military officer we never see. This is an assignment made to order for Damrau’s champagne timbre, musicality, warm-hearted presence, and unerring theatrical instincts. In other good news, the baton is in the hands of the rising podium star Joana Mallwitz, noted for buoyant lyrical flair, a quality vital to this score. The director is the white-hot Lydia Steier, whose winning streak has just been confirmed by her appointment as the next general director of the Ruhrtriennale, Germany’s biggest and baddest arts bash. In a statement, Steier waxes starry-eyed about the festival’s history of “artistic ventures, courageous voices, and radical beauty.” To our ears, frankly, this is all so much bushwa. Granted, our experience with Steier’s much-decorated work in the theater is limited, but her penchant for subjecting heroines to physical abuse (gang rape in Salome, flagellation in La Vestale) has left an impression. What scope Strauss’s comedy of manners will offer Steier for such brutalist feminism we cannot imagine. But we’re afraid we’re about to find out. —Matthew Gurewitsch