Der Rosenkavalier is the German romantic opera that on paper I feel I ought to really like, but somehow...

No, go on, some of you tell me what you think about it.  I would be fascinated to hear.

I do understand your reservations about the piece, Don B.  I "come and go" with it (as I do with Wagner) - sometimes I want to listen to nothing else for weeks,  other times it's like a dose of castor oil.

It belongs firmly in the school of "neo-classicism" in the C20th... Strauss had allegedly said to Hofmanstahl that he intended to write "a Mozart opera".  This isn't so different to Stravinsky's intentions when writing the "Classical Symphony", or even OEDIPUS REX - to hold up the forms and formulas of another age to a modern light, and see how they look and sound?   It's not intended as pastiche or even homage - it's more of a critical exploration.

My own feeling (which is far from being original thought) is that ROSENKAV is an allegory of the twilight of an age - "golden" or otherwise - to which no return could now ever be possible, and which has already ended.  Although the action is set in a mythical C18th (and allegedly derives from Moliere, although this is hardly discernable) the title evokes a purposefully Wagnerian hint of medieval chivalry and amour courtois.   They're all deliberately bygone, worn-out conceits,  putting the values of previous societies under the modern microscope.   To a certain extent there's something of the Reginald Bunthorne about it too, but much gentler - trying to understand what the fascination with pseudo-medievalism is about, and why it held/holds such an attraction?  (from Wagner's cod-medieval werblings to "justify" his lifestyle and Weltauschaung, through to the outrageously silly fantasies of Hereward The Wake.  Or Bardle the Beed).

Whereas Wagner had been unconditionally sentimental about his medievalisms,  seeing nothing but rose-tinted good in everything he believed society in the Middle Ages represented,  Strauss and Hofmanstahl take the opportunity to hold a view.  Whilst, perhaps, it's all very pretty and "civilised", ultimately it's a wretched, coarse world in which love is bought and sold for cash,  and Oktavian must have a bride of suitable status..  regardless of the collateral damage that ensues.   But all the bluntness implied is elegantly dressed in coiffured wigs and crinolines, so that the utter heartbreak at the centre of the story occurs offstage - the Marschallin retires to weep her heart out in the wings,  as Sophie and Oktavian (who is, of course, merely Och's younger reincarnation, as Sophie is the Marschallin's) canoodle in private.   (It all looks lovely, of course, but since we've seen the Marschallin and Oktavian's wilder sexual cavortings at the start,  you have to wonder what kind of wedding-night Oktavian will have with a girl who sings "I feel as though I'm praying" to explain her emotional state??  Methinks Herr Oktavian will be down the whorehouse for what he prefers by the end of the nuptial week - or back in bed with the Marschallin.  What are those unrelated-key flute-chords about, if not that?  "Don't be fooled, listeners - the appearance of conventional wedded bliss is already tainted with a desire for more exotic fruit").

Anyhow, I shall look forward to seeing McVicar's take on all this?   For various visa-related and work-related reasons I'll be spending end-May to end-June in London

Love it love it love it

HOWEVER, as I have said before, I would make a LARGE cut from very near the beginning of Act 3 to not long before the trio.

Did anybody get to Zurich Opera's concert performance on Saturday at the RFH?  I did, and it was really rather wonderful.  I wouldn't have recommended it as somebody's first Rosenkavalier, as it would have been terribly confusing trying to work out what sex Octavian/Mariandel was supposed to be at any given time, and of course what on earth was going on with the "bewitched room" in Act 3.  But the singing and playing were really quite glorious.  The star of the show was the Ochs, Alfred Muff - possibly the best Ochs I have seen, including John Tomlinson.  Very strongly characterised, despite the concert setting.  And Nina Stemme was gorgeous - a much more lyrical Marschallin than I expected.  Luxury casting too in the role of the Italian Tenor - Piotr Beczala, erstwhile Faust/Duke of Mantua/Lensky for the ROH, sang it better than I have ever heard.

(I'm currently consulting my diary to work out how many performances in ENO's upcoming run I can afford to get to.  I am making the most of their cut-price ticket scheme for under-30s before I cease to qualify )

Reiner, I've just seen your post.  My concessionary rate goes for 2 tickets per night.  PM me.

Or Prokofiev's

To me, it sounds completely artificial - completely bloodless, with the music turned into a sort of gorgeous confection that is miles away from what Strauss actually wrote.  In this Schwarzkopf - a singer I really can't stand - appears to be Karajan's willing collaborator; it's all very calculated and to my ears drained of all real feeling.

I'd agree about Crespin - a singer who makes every word tell.  And Solti, like Bernstein, has his failings (both can be a bit overblown IMO - well, in Bernstein's case, quite a lot overblown) but at least the music is alive.

I have a very soft spot for the Covent Garden video of Rosenkavalier, with Solti, Te Kanawa (whom Solti invaigles/scares into giving one of her very occasional real performances), Anne Howells and Barbara Bonney (and not least because I was at the performance  )

Agreed - nobody really foresaw WW1, even in the preceding weeks.  But it's difficult to look back at this period without being aware of what was to come, and I certainly get a sense (possibly an anachronistic one) of the artificiality and unsustainability of the society of the time.  The relationship between Ochs and Faninal seems to foreshadow the inevitability of change; in some senses Ochs, boor though he undoubtedly is, is much more grounded than the Marschallin, who seems to me to have great depths of self-deception.  With hindsight Hofmanstahl does seem to be remarkably prescient

Again, an anachronistic view, but I find that Der Zauberberg is never very far from my thoughts when I think about Rosenkavalier.  Mann portrays a ritualised society which becomes totally unconnected from what is happening below, and which is explicitly destroyed by the coming of war.  (The difference perhaps is that on the Magic Mountain, the inmates talk, and have sex; in Hofmanstahl's Vienna, they just have sex.)

Without knowing how closely composer and librettist followed events, I would disagree here. 1911 was the year of the second Moroccan crisis between Germany, France and Britain, as well as the final year of the naval race between Britain and Germany. Germany was in alliance with Austria-Hungary v Russia, which had nearly risked war over Bosnia in 1908. So a sense of cataclysm could well have hung over some Germans at this time.

I'll come with you on the Edo de Waart recording, Stanley

It's not an opera I love well-enough to have invested in other recordings - especially as they are rarely priced accessibly.