Der Rosenkavalier

Synopsis

A bittersweet blend of young love and mid-life melancholy, Richard Strauss’s charming Viennese comedy Der Rosenkavalier returns to the London Coliseum in David McVicar’s delightfully detailed staging, first seen in 2008.

Rejoicing in some of the composer’s most opulent orchestration and voluptuous melodies, as well as some insidiously catchy waltz tunes, Der Rosenkavalier offers a treat for fans of the female voice.

Sarah Connolly returns as the ardent young ‘Knight of the Rose’, with Sophie Bevan as the innocent Sophie. Amanda Roocroft makes her role debut as the Marschallin, the worldly ‘older woman’ who graciously cedes her teenage lover to a younger rival.

Also returning from the acclaimed 2008 cast are John Tomlinson as the sexually rampant Baron Ochs and Andrew Shore as Faninal.

Our Review:

28 January 2012

How strange it is. The young Richard Strauss followed two psychologically intricate yet terse operas, Salome and Elektra, with the simplest of all plotlines, the love triangle, and let it sprawl to three-and-a-bit hours. Yet, as this enthralling English National Opera revival demonstrates, Der Rosenkavalier is not a note too long.

The faded gentility of David McVicar’s grubbily ornate designs (conceived in partnership with Michael Vale) not only reflects the Marschallin’s vanishing youth, it also represents a fast-fading world of crumbling privilege whose archetype is the boorish Baron Ochs. Sir John Tomlinson plays the oleaginous old tail-chaser with outrageous gusto and a voice whose frayed resources suit this gout-ridden old buffoon rather more than they did his exposed Pogner in the Royal Opera’s recent Meistersinger.

After a hard-driven, frantically sexual Prelude from conductor Edward Gardner, McVicar’s production open...

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Latest User Review

David Bryant, Suffolk - 30 January 2012:

Glorious - though yet again, the grossly over played non singing part of Leopold is a real abberation. Are we really supposed to find someone picking his nose like a 2 year old amusing? or 'tripping' as he brings a tray downstage amusing. The actor should be shot. Appalling....

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