MEM PIN
O1'ERA
Nearly Everything in the Garden
By CHARLES REID rrHAT a woman who has reached maturity j should renounce a lover of seventeen for his romantic good and greater fulfilment does not, as I read Der Rosenkavalier, mark the acme of feminine heroism. A fearful wrench, no doubt. But why did she take up with an adolescent in the first place? Even when sung by Lotte Lehmann with a caress and sombre warmth of line that will never be matched, the Marschallin always struck me as a strong-minded if pam- pered and over-privileged creature who knew just what she was about and had a pretty good idea from the start what she was in for, wrinkles included.
Marschallins of lesser though memorable talent came and went. None gave me a lump in the throat, and I assumed that none ever would or could. But last week the thing happened. The occasion was Luchino Visconti's new Rosen- kavalier production (dress rehearsal) at Covent Garden, the Marschallin Sena Jurinac. It hap- pened at the end of Act 1. After Octavian had flung out of the bedroom in despair, the Mar- schallin, instead of remaining handcuffed, in effect, to her dressing-table mirror, made a slow circuit to the door through which he had disappeared, stood disconsolate for a moment, then slowly came down towards the footlights on a darkening stage with massive red drapes closing behind her. As her `girlhood' tune and the main Octavian theme hovered and alternated on solo violins, she laid her hand near her throat and looked out into the theatre unseeingly.
All this wasn't the least bit like the traditional or standard Act 1 'curtain' which, effective enough in its day and way, had to my eye (and throat) become near-fossilised through repetition. By rethinking and refitting one of the opera's main 'hinges,' Visconti and Jurinac between them gave new breath and a touch of new substance to its central character. But imagine. On the open- ing night, instead of laying her hand to her throat, Miss Jurinac heaved a noisy sigh. Now a sigh is, to say the least of it, an ambiguous thing. It might have been intended to mean: 'Tiresome boy, to go off in such a huff! If I don't get him off my hands and on to the little Faninal girl's, I shall never hear the end of it.' All things con- sidered, I would press Mr Visconti and'Uiss Jurinac to backpedal on their second thoughts, if they haven't done so already, and restore the gesture and the timing that moved so many of us at the dress rehearsal. In a production that mixes new tricks with old, good ideas with questionable ones, it doesn't do to jettison anything on the credit side.
What of the opening scene? It jolted me as it jolted many. Having deserted a vast, tousled bed, the lovers disported themselves on what looked like nylon bearskins before an enormous, caryatid-borne fireplace that glowed and flickered stiflingly. What was the lesson or insinuation here? That the Bichette-Quinquin idyll was even more abandoned than is to be read in or between the Hofmannsthal lines? Or that Strauss's music, overawed, overclinging and overheated, calls for a stage picture is the same spirit and key? Them
remain open questions or, if you like, open wounds.
Certain other questions can be closed peremp- torily. The Act 1 levee? Nothing could have been more brilliantly pointed and planned. This was Visconti in incomparable vein. Nothing, on the other hand, could be flatter, whether physi- cally or dramatically, than the Presentation of the Rose, staged in a garden room, with people trooping in through french windows; surely an up-staircase entry for the Rosebearer and escort is an essential part of the excitement here? And do we really need an upper gallery in Faninal's house so that Octavian and Valzacchi can be seen plotting `Marianders' assignation with Baron Ochs? No; the opening of Act 3 not only makes this point but labours it. What did those pallid, William Morrissy stained-glass windows in the oversumptuous tavern scene remind me of? A wet afternoon at the V and A. There were costume oddities, too. At one point Octavian appeared top-booted, in full 1745 riding-fig. What good thing is to be said of his anomalous hat, Regency buck style? That he wasn't re- quired to put it on.
Perhaps I shall be reproached for giving over-
much space to production matters when `the music's the thing.' But when a production is new and likely to be with us for fifteen years or more, and when some aspects of it seem to get in the way of the music rather than serve it, then secondary considerations get a sneak priority. Here, however—and hoping that I may return to the musical side in a later piece—is a quick interim assessment.
Miss Jurinac's debut Marschallin is likely to mature into one of those impersonations that are cited with such awe in successive reference books that generations unborn bite their nails at having missed them. Her charm, poise and smile are lightly touched with an irony which, although I have never come across anything quite like it in this role before, absolutely belongs and gives the Marschallin almost a new dimen- sion. But while sensing her continuous play of thought upon the Marschallin's psychology, I never feared that her vocal line would wilt in neglect. Whether in musical dialogue or on big melodic flights, her soprano was always of patrician substance and always supple, its colours shifting as the musical or extra-musical tensions shifted. In Josephine Veasey she had an Octavian of matching lustre and confidence; in Joan Carlyle (Sophie) a chosen rival who on the opening night, although well within the skin of the part, didn't find her best voice until after the Presentation Scene; and in Michael Lang- don a kinsman (Ochs) whose mastery is now such that he makes one of the most ruthless roles in the repertory seem no trouble at all. From the orchestra, Georg Solti, whose tempi ex- tremes are his own, got all the satin and sweet- ness in the world. But there was plenty of Sold fire as well. He didn't cloy us.
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