"Der Rosenkavalier"

[Richard Tarleton]

Can you people recommend the best "Rosenkavalier" conducted by Carlos Kleiber please, as there seem to be a few available from what I can see (through Amazon).

Comparative review here, Tetra - I don't know the Kleiber versions so can't help but instinct would direct me towards Flott/Bonney and away from Gwyneth Jones, in spite of L Popp.... I know you're on a Kleiber quest but both the Solti/Crespin/Minton etc. and Karajan/Schwarzkopf etc. are very fine versions, and for a DVD I'm very fond of my ROH/Solti/te Kanawa etc.., dir. John Schlesinger.

An old family friend long deceased saw it in Covent Garden in 1926 with Elizabeth Schumann as the Marschallin and Lotte Lehmann as Octavian. The friend's parents were friends of Nellie Melba and they were sitting with her in her box, Schumann directed a deep curtsey in their direction before acknowledging the rest of the applause.....

[slarty]

Can you people recommend the best "Rosenkavalier" conducted by Carlos Kleiber please, as there seem to be a few available from what I can see (through Amazon).

The two best would be Kleiber's 1994 Vienna performance with Lott, Von Otter and Bonney, this is on DVD and is a must.
His best on CD is the 1973 Bavarian State Opera in wonderful stereo with Claire Watson, Fassbaender and Popp. This is better than the 1979 Performance with Jones as the Marshallin. This set is issued by Orfeo.
Don't bother with the Solti, if you like Kleiber, as i know you do, you won't care for Solti much. I did not either.

[Tetrachord]

Thank you, Slarty. Kleiber was an admirer of Solti, but I'll take your comments as having authority!! Can't wait to get this. Next year I'm presenting two x 2 hour lectures on Kleiber and I want to be all over the brief. (Such a shame the German biography isn't going to be available in English translation any time soon. I contacted the author and he told me so.)

I'm only just discovering the Strauss operas, apart from "Salome" which I know well and love. Kleiber has lead me on this journey. And, of course, Erich conducted "Rosenkavalier" and I see that is also available.

Thanks to the other contributors here, too, who have offered excellent and knowledgeable advice. RT's post, in particular, tells me I probably need more than one version of this wonderful opera!!

[Richard Tarleton]

Thank you, Slarty. Kleiber was an admirer of Solti, but I'll take your comments as having authority!!

Er - no . Slarty may not like Solti, but he was a great Straussian and both the versions I mention are very fine. Solti became a friend of Strauss's in his final years, and discussed how to conduct Rosenkavalier with him in his home in Garmisch. The Munich Staatsoper where Solti was conductor after the war put on a new production of it in honour of Strauss's 85th birthday, and Strauss (who was too frail to come to the public performances) came to a rehearsal and even conducted a short section from the end of Act 2.

Solti conducted the final trio from Rosenkavalier at Strauss's funeral, with Marianne Schech as the Marschallin, Maud Kunitz as Octavian and Gerda Sommerschuh as Sophie. "One after the other, each singer broke down in tears and dropped out of the ensemble, but they recovered themselves and we all finished together.....Afterwards, Frau Strauss came over to thank me. She was heavily veiled, and the proud general's daughter had turned into a broken, weeping old woman. She died not long after, unable to live without her beloved Richard". Here's the video with both the rehearsal and the funeral, and Solti talking about it - the Rosenkavalier episode starts at around 3.50.

The tenor - see above discussion - on the earlier of my Solti recordings is a certain young Luciano Pavarotti, luxury casting indeed!

[Tetrachord]

Thank you for that. And, of course, Erich Kleiber knew Richard Strauss and took his son to meet the composer when Carlos was about 15 or 16. The father had conducted "Rosenkavalier" as well.

[Richard Tarleton]

Just edited mine, adding the video! Strauss told Solti not to conduct it like Clemens Krauss

[Richard Barrett]

I've never heard/seen Kleiber's interpretations of Rosenkavalier, and this thread is making me want to do so soon.

Although... what about this opera as a whole? Musically it's highly luxurious and not without profound insights, although also not without cloying moments, but the plot and especially how it unfolds in the third act...? Clearly Hofmannsthal provided Strauss this time with something that completely fitted his tastes, which isn't necessarily a good thing, like giving half a ton of profiteroles to someone with a sweet tooth who's dangerously overweight... so when hearing it I often wonder how much more I would like it if the music were somehow removed from the "story", or if the production would increase the sense of artificiality to the point where the story no longer plays a central role. I imagine that has been done somewhere at some point. What do people think about all this?

[Tetrachord]

RB: you've really touched on something here. The luxurious nature of "Der Rosenkavalier". A member of the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra was interviewed for the Kleiber documentary "I Am Lost to the World" and spoke about this opera and Kleiber's conducting of it. He said (paraphrasing) "Kleiber is not for everybody; it's like having only dessert every night of the week. "Rosenkavalier" 3 times a week? I could have killed him with a tomahawk"!!! Naturally this comment upset me - I found it offensive as he was the only one to make this kind of criticism about the work and its conductor, but clearly the "ton of profiteroles" does play into a certain kind of reception of the opera. For some people.

[gradus]

What a fascinating video, one I've never seen before, many thanks for posting it. The trio is an overwhelming emotional experience in normal performance but at Strauss's funeral...

[Richard Barrett]

clearly the "ton of profiteroles" does play into a certain kind of reception of the opera. For some people.

I wasn't talking about the way people receive the opera but about the way Strauss received the libretto.

[ahinton]

I've never heard/seen Kleiber's interpretations of Rosenkavalier, and this thread is making me want to do so soon.

Although... what about this opera as a whole? Musically it's highly luxurious and not without profound insights, although also not without cloying moments, but the plot and especially how it unfolds in the third act...? Clearly Hofmannsthal provided Strauss this time with something that completely fitted his tastes, which isn't necessarily a good thing, like giving half a ton of profiteroles to someone with a sweet tooth who's dangerously overweight... so when hearing it I often wonder how much more I would like it if the music were somehow removed from the "story", or if the production would increase the sense of artificiality to the point where the story no longer plays a central role. I imagine that has been done somewhere at some point. What do people think about all this?

I think that you have a point but, to me, Rosenkavalier is not all about tons of profiteroles and lashings of glutinous sentimentality as so many of its detractors have sought to aver; true, it's a long way from Salome and Elektra yet at the same time would only be what it is because those two earlier operas formed a part of its historical background 9Musically speaking, that is). To me, rather as in the case of The Dream of Gerontius, the music that Strauss wrote for it has a good deal more potency than the libretto that he set; the same could be said of Strauss's later Intermezzo where the domestic trivialities upon which it's based seem to have inspired music on a more elevated level altogether.

There's an amusing story of Elliott Carter, well into his 90s, watching a video of Rosenkavalier with his wife and becoming increasingly irascible in the days that followed because he was finding that his work was being interfered with by memories of what he'd heard of which he was struggling to rid his mind...

[Conchis]

I've never heard/seen Kleiber's interpretations of Rosenkavalier, and this thread is making me want to do so soon.

Although... what about this opera as a whole? Musically it's highly luxurious and not without profound insights, although also not without cloying moments, but the plot and especially how it unfolds in the third act...? Clearly Hofmannsthal provided Strauss this time with something that completely fitted his tastes, which isn't necessarily a good thing, like giving half a ton of profiteroles to someone with a sweet tooth who's dangerously overweight... so when hearing it I often wonder how much more I would like it if the music were somehow removed from the "story", or if the production would increase the sense of artificiality to the point where the story no longer plays a central role. I imagine that has been done somewhere at some point. What do people think about all this?

Strauss was a bourgeois and HH provided him with a libretto that hits on all the classic bourgeois 'pressure points': i.e., naughty goings on amongst the ruling classes/haute bourgeoisie. Just consider the immense popularity of things like Downtown Abbey (political propaganda, imo) amongst the lower middle-classes today to appreciate how little things have changed.

I think Strauss went to town on it partly because he found the plot and dialogue totally stimulating, but mainly because it allowed him to indulge his love of the female voice. I'm sure I'm not the first person who thinks he might have been indulging a few of his private peccadilloes in his treatment of Octavian, as well.

I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't think it's over-long: even fans of the opera (and I'm one) think it could do with a trim.

Richard Jones's mainly excellent Glyndebourne production from 2014 (which I saw at the Proms) made an attempt to move in the direction you suggest but didn't (quite) get there, I thought. I got the impression Jones felt he was beginning to pull against something essential to the work and so held back from mounting a total assault on it; though the bits that did work were very memorable - the 'commodification' of Sophie at the beginning of Act 2, for example.

There are two Kleiber DVDs of Rosenkavalier - one with Gwyneth Jones and a later one with Felicity Lott. I only know the latter one, which is excellent.

[Tetrachord]

I wasn't talking about the way people receive the opera but about the way Strauss received the libretto.

As I said, you "touched" on something. The way Strauss treated the libretto is the way the opera was composed and the way we 'receive' it.

[Richard Barrett]

Strauss was a bourgeois and HH provided him with a libretto that hits on all the classic bourgeois 'pressure points': i.e., naughty goings on amongst the ruling classes/haute bourgeoisie. Just consider the immense popularity of things like Downtown Abbey (political propaganda, imo) amongst the lower middle-classes today to appreciate how little things have changed.

Quite. And of course in Rosenkavalier traditional feudal values and pecking orders are reestablished in the end when Baron Ochs is sent back to the sticks where he belongs, having been humiliated by the "sophisticated" Viennese.

[Richard Barrett]

The way Strauss treated the libretto is the way the opera was composed and the way we 'receive' it.

The way it was composed is in no way equivalent to the way listeners/viewers receive it!