I've been reading this thread with a great deal of interest because until it appeared, I'd only heard very favourable comments about the work and it's reassuring to know that I'm not the only one who has problems with it.

Regular readers might recall that I picked up a full score in a charity shop earlier this year. This prompted me to buy a complete recording on CD (Karajan) as I'd only got a cassette of highlights (Bohm). Is the Karajan so bad? The orchestra are on good form but an interesting note in the booklet says that the original intention had been to use the orchestra of La Scala, but they were too expensive so they used the Philharmonia. Also Karajan first conducted the opera when he was 23.

Anyway, I followed the score while listening to the CDs and I think that was a mistake. I think it is better to let the music wash over you and I should really have followed the words with an English translation because I was occasionally bored, not fully understanding what was going on. Even now I think there are too many words even though Strauss gets through them very efficiently. I wonder whether Hofmannsthal would have been better off writing a play. Perhaps it works better in the opera house with surtitles because isn't there sometimes a problem with the singers being heard over Strauss's lavish orchestration?

So I'm not a convert, yet, even though there are some fine moments. Even Strauss acknowledged that its success depended largely upon the waltzes, the presentation of the rose near the beginning of act two and the trio near the end of act three.

I think Strauss knew what he was doing with the text in general - I do think Strauss lets it be heard when the words themselves really need to be understood. I don't know how Hofmannsthal imagined the last trio but for me it's a particularly telling moment in that up until that moment pretty much everything in the plot is hanging in the balance, then after it everything is sorted - and that's achieved with hardly a word being comprehensible, at least between Octavian's "something came and something happened" and the Marschallin's amen. I don't have remotely the same feeling of resolution on reading the text - for me it's one of those 'this is what opera can do' moments.

Certainly is!  Although it's not alone, and the Quartet in RIGOLETTO works in the same way (although to different ends). The trio is actually three simultaneous soliloquies, each character revealing their own private thoughts - they are not interacting with each other at all.  (The entries of all three characters are marked "vor sich" ("to herself") in the score).  And there's a musical battle for Oktavian's affections (although the Marschallin already realises the hopelessness of the situation) between the two sopranos, reaching a climax at Orch Fig 292, where first Sophie has the top B-natural ("dich hab' ich lieb"), which the Marschallin immediately duplicates a bar later ("wie halt Maenner das Glucklichsein verstehn").

It's easy for the whole thing to become a pea-soup in which three divas try to outdo each other, but in fact Strauss's markings about who is in the foreground, and who in the background, are extremely specific IF they are observed (which, on the recordings I've heard, they are not).   The moment when the Marschallin realises that it's hopeless is in the section after Fig #289, where Sophie has "ich spur, sie gibt mir ihn" ("I'm sure she's giving him to me") and Oktavian is blathering away in his own self-delusion ("und g'rad an die")..  and the Marschallin is lost for words (or too choked-up to utter them)...  it comes down to just Oktavian & Sophie briefly and they are both marked "p".  It's the moment when the Marschallin regains her objectivity and sees the situation for what it really is, and she says so (marked "f" - everything else in the orchestra is marked "p" and so are the other two singers) "Der steht der Bub, and da steh ich" ("The boy's standing there; I'm standing here").  That's the moment of resolution, that it's all over - what happens next doesn't, and shouldn't, involve her.   Strauss has clearly marked this to resound above everything else, she's walked out of their sound-world and into her own.  But it's very rarely performed that way

[Clearly, unless the Director is dozing or hypnotised by all this o.t.t. emotion-venting,  this is an instruction from the composer to take the Marschallin downstage, away from the other two...   she's "left" the trio, despite continuing to sing over it.  The other two then "rejoin" by coming up to forte at Sophie's "Und spur nich dich" (Fig #291).]

Ollie and I have diverged opinion-wise about the meaning of "In Gottes namen!" in the past.  Without putting words in his mouth (I am sure he will add them himself!) I seem to remember he sees this as a moment of resignation.  Maybe that is what the text says ("In God's name be it"), but I hear a vicious, ironic anger in her voice...  "God" is who ordains things, and the rest of us just have to suffer with his accursed "Will"??  (it is marked "ff", after all).  (I've staged this scene in workshop format, and she dropped whatever she was holding in her hand - I think it was a book, something that would make a thud - at that point...  something has to happen, she's just watched her whole world disintegrate in front of her...  it can't be static!).   There follows a stage-direction that she leaves the room, and walks into an ante-chamber.  WHY?  Characters don't do things without reasons.  She leaves because she can't stand it any more, and most probably because she's streaming with tears and - as any woman would - "goes to the bathroom".  When she comes back, she's composed herself, and wiped her eyes.

If I ever got the chance to do this scene again (which seems, frankly, doubtful!) I would like to look at doing it all in flashback...  it's the nightmare the Marschallin can't erase from her mind,  however much she tries...  the other two voices follow her round the room...  and then Oktavian kisses Sophie...