The Bavarian State Opera’s new production of Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier is staged by Barrie Kosky, a flamboyant director famed for his fearless approach to the great monuments of opera. It will be conducted by the Bavarian State Opera’s designated musical director, Vladimir Jurowski, with star soprano Marlis Petersen making her debut in the role of the Marschallin.
Der Rosenkavalier marks the apogee of Richard Strauss’s collaboration with his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The work sets its play-within-a-play in a fantasy rococo world in Vienna in the era of Empress Maria Theresa.
The Feldmarschallin, Princess Werdenberg, sees that her romance with the much younger Octavian is on the wane. She therefore dispatches him to Lerchenau to play the part of “Knight of the Rose” on behalf of her cousin, Baron Ochs. The intended bride is Sophie von Faninal, whose wealthy father has recently been ennobled. But no sooner has Octavian set eyes on Sophie than he knows that he will henceforth be wooing her for himself. He therefore begins plotting to thwart the planned union between Sophie and the oafish von Ochs.
Strauss’s music ingeniously offsets the personal entanglements of Hofmannsthal’s libretto. Thus he paraphrases historical compositional techniques even while perfecting his own style. The result is like time travel into the human soul – an ongoing dialogue between past and fleeting present as well as a meditation on the inexorable passage of that “curious thing” called time.
- Marlis Petersen (The Marschallin)
- Christof Fischesser (Baron Ochs of Lerchenau)
- Samantha Hankey (Octavian)
- Johannes Martin Kränzle (Monsieur de Faninal)
- Katharina Konradi (Sophie de Faninal)
- Daniela Köhle (Marianne Leitmetzerin)
- Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (Valzacchi)
- Ursula Hesse von den Steinen (Annina)
- Composer: Richard Strauss
- Director: Barrie Kosky
- TV production: Henning Kasten
- Music director: Vladimir Jurowski
- Orchestra : Bayerisches Staatsorchester
- Choir: Chor der Bayerischen Staatsoper
- Libretto: Hugo von Hofmannsthal
- Sets: Rufus Didwiszus
- Costumes: Victoria Behr
- Lighting: Alessandro Carletti
- Dramaturge: Nikolaus Stenitzer
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