A full Strauss for the finale

Published on Sunday 2 September 2007 00:06

OPERA has inspired much of the theatre programme of the 2007 Edinburgh International Festival, but this has been a disappointing year for staged opera generally, with only two productions on offer - L'Orfeo from Barcelona, and the final week's new production of Strauss' Capriccio from Cologne.

With 1m inherited debt and a very short time to put a festival together when the opera world is booked up years in advance, it's perhaps no surprise, but with a festival director currently creating one of his own opera's on film in Sydney as we speak, opera lovers can surely hope for more meat next year.

So what of that Capriccio (***), Strauss's problematic, often sublime opera, that looks at the nature of opera itself? Director Christian Von Gtz roots the production in the 1940s - Strauss wrote it in 1941 while living under the Nazi regime - making the scored Rococo setting a kind of mental 'fantasy' world where the opera's protagonists escape from the cruel reality of their Nazi surroundings before everything they know is annihilated.

It is a beautiful production on Gabriele Jaenecke's steeply raked, glossy, set, and Von Gtz is clearly an actors' director, able to extort detailed performances from his cast, including an excellent Gabriele Fontana as the Countess. But despite some fine moments - particularly in the second act in which Strauss's chaotic orchestration is reflected on stage in a chaotic party scene - Von Gtz occasionally handles his theme too bluntly, with Gestapo agents wheeled in from the side intermittently.

What is interesting is that Strauss's central argument about music and words shines through as greater than any interpretation - perhaps surprisingly, given that we are meant to consider this a little esoteric, given the context. But with the nuanced performance from the Grzenich Orchestra under Markus Stenz in the pit, this concern is not just a retreat from reality - in this interpretation - but an affirmation of humanity and the fact that being able to express ourselves creatively is what makes us human.

Perhaps last week more than any other was the week of the great soprano. In the Queen's Hall, phenomenal Wagnerian soprano Christine Brewer (****) gave a recital which, with decorous accompanist Roger Vignoles on the piano, attuned her vocal power to the drama of the opening Strauss songs, but most effectively in the vocal play of Britten's Four Cabaret Songs - enquiring, poignant, funny.

Another of the great Strauss interpreters of our time is Deborah Voigt (****), who gave a much acclaimed debut in the composer's Salome last year in Chicago. Voigt famously had gastric bypass surgery to lose weight, but in this concert performance of the final scene from Salome her voice remained as sublime as ever, although it was occasionally drowned in a rather uncharacterful accompaniment from the San Francisco Symphony under renowned conductor (and composer) Michael Tilson Thomas.

The SFS's Mahler 7th Symphony - an inspired coupling with Strauss' Salome - started out in uninspired manner, but warmed up significantly. This clean, light, sophisticated American sound, particularly in the strings, can lack depth, certainly in contrast to the week's other big visitors, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under ber-conductor Mariss Jansons (****). Jansons is a man with a staggering ability to bare the structure of a piece of music, making audiences feel like they're having some sort of musical epiphany. Sometimes it's almost alien in its refreshment - rarely has Sibelius 1, their Monday night offering, been played so sumptuously.