The Marschallin is breakfasting in her rococo boudoir with her teenage lover Octavian when all hell breaks loose in the next room. Good God! Is it her husband? No, the sex-positive philosopher of the bedroom realizes, just her country cousin Baron Ochs (meaning “ox”), the bull in every china shop. And wham! In he barges, a living exclamation point in Big Bird yellow from top to toe.
His cocked hat alone, spilling over with ostrich feathers, is just the first of many wows. The curtain calls for the premiere of the Zurich Opera’s Der Rosenkavalier, filmed live on September 21, reveal a whole army of carnival-in-Venice-meets-Fantasia loonies, each the sun of another little solar system.
Kicking off his first season as general director of the Zurich Opera, the savvy Matthias Schulz (poached from Berlin’s prestigious Staatsoper Under den Linden) stacked his deck for Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s surefire “comedy for music” with trending female aces. Joana Mallwitz on the podium. Lydia Steier in the director’s chair. And, in a major casting coup, the charismatic Diana Damrau in her role debut as the Marschallin.
Yet who stole the show? The skinny dude who designed the whole shebang for L.A. Opera 20 years ago. You’ll spot him taking a bow in the same sunglasses, biker’s bandanna, and punk-rock black he’s affected for decades.
Collectors of contemporary gallery art will recognize Gottfried Helnwein, now well into his 70s. Reportedly affable to a fault in person, he’s a sort of Goya for our time, obsessed with post-Holocaust trauma. His Adoration of the Magi, for instance, shows three Nazi officers, a Vogue-worthy Madonna, and an infant Hitler. Tackling Der Rosenkavalier, which is set in his native Vienna at its frilliest, Helnwein on the one hand took a break from his signature imagery, which upsets people—and on the other hand gave a pass to the time-honored Rosenkavalier froufrou mit Schlag.
Instead, he presents each act of the opera as its own monochromatic painting-come-to-life, with Act One steeped in contemplative dusty blue, Act Two in flashy ecru and gold, Act Three in passion-run-riot scarlet. Built elements are few. Rattling around wide-open spaces, the principals enact their tale of love lost, love found, and comeuppance, intermittently overtaken by waves of the picturesque zanies and hustlers with which their Vienna abounds.
A hand-me-down physical production! What was Schulz thinking? Yet his gamble paid off. Günther Groissböck’s larger-than-life Ochs sweeps all before him with his braggadocio, buzzing like bumblebees in a barrel. Angela Brouwer’s bitter, androgynous mezzo lends Octavian a feral edge, especially striking in charades as an errant chambermaid. As the dewy heiress Sophie, Emily Pogorelc soars with a skylark’s ease.
Too bad about the staging. If Maximilian Schell’s original playbook survives, Steier chucked it, and well she might. But her smarty-pants handiwork is constantly pushing against the words and music in ways trivial and egregious. At least it’s not until the gratuitous cuffing and trampling of Ochs in Act Three that she deploys the ultragraphic sadomasochism without which, to the best of our limited knowledge, no show of hers is complete.
Der Rosenkavalier is available on demand on arte.tv. Depending on your region, access may require a virtual private network
Matthew Gurewitsch writes about opera and classical music for AIR MAIL. He lives in Hawaii
