Film: Der Rosenkavalier
Release date: 29th November 2010
Certificate: E
Running time: 192 mins
Director: Paul Czninner
Starring: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Otto Edelmann, Sena Jurinac, Anneliese Rothenberger, Erich Kunz
Genre: Comedy/Romance/Musical
Studio: Park Circus
Format: Blu-ray
Country: UK
Following its 1911 premiere, Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier caused such a sensation that train operators ran additional trains from German-speaking Europe to take unprecedented opera-goers to Dresden. Modern opera fans won’t have to go to such extreme measures thanks to this Blu-ray release of a classic 1962 performance filmed by Paul Czinner.
The Marschallin is deeply in love with her young lover Octavian, but knows that she's getting older, and one day he'll tire of her.
Her fears are realised sooner than she anticipated when a chain of events are set in motion after her uncouth, philandering cousin Baron Ochs sets his sights on Sophie von Faninal, the beautiful daughter of a rich Viennese bourgeois. Having arranged with the young woman’s father to combine his noble rank with Faninal’s money by marrying Sophie, Ochs asks the Marschallin to recommend an appropriate young man to be his Knight of the Rose. The Marschallin duly recommends her young lover to present the silver rose to Sophie on the Baron’s behalf as a traditional symbol of courtship.
As Octavian presents the ceremonial rose to Sophie, the two fall instantly in love with one another. They must then work out a way to prevent Baron Ochs from marrying Sophie, assisted by the good-hearted Marschallin in Strauss’ 18th century-set comedy of manners…
Richard Strauss, not to be confused with the Waltz King Johann, was responsible for two of the most arcane and discordant operas of the 20th century, Elektra and Salome. Hungarian émigré Paul Czinner was a more or less openly gay man in a time when it wasn’t just frowned upon, it was a crime (in the Nazi era especially, from which Czinner was fortunate to escape). It’s odd then that these two most unconventional of men should be brought together in a curiously old fashioned romantic comedy of an opera. It should be noted that this opera would have appeared old fashioned even in Strauss’ own day, something which may have caught his audience, used to by then to his enfant terrible reputation, completely off guard. A modern equivalent would be Matthew Barney deciding to make a slapstick comedy, or Gaspar Noé embarking on a rom com. But all that seems a bit beside the point in 2010, and opera newcomers anticipating sturm und drang and high theatrics will be disappointed here. They might also struggle to condone a supposedly sophisticated work which features the part of a servant played by a child in black-face.
Aside from the casual racism of the production, one of the biggest stumbling points is the humour. It’s simply not funny. An operatic comedy of errors and manners is, to put it mildly, an acquired taste; but even so, much of the humour does seem to consist of in-jokes for the opera crowd, part of an elitist, self-congratulatory world that puts most off. Opera by its very nature is marked by heightened emotion and hyperbole, which is fine for stories about myth and legend, the extremities of life and death, but when applied to comedy, it seems misplaced. Ochs, in particular, is a real pain. A boorish buffoon and intentionally grotesque, he fulfils a function in counterbalancing much of the preciousness going on around him, but he’s rarely amusing. The only thing that might raise a smile is the initial oddness of opera’s highly stylised nature - the way characters will announce an event as banal as someone arriving at the door in huge soaring tones. Though after three hours, the fun to be had in this does become limited.
Another issue is the feeling that opera inevitably loses something when taken out of the confines of the theatre. There’s clearly a market for opera on the small-screen, and it offers a chance for opera fanatics to catch classic or older performances they might otherwise never see, but as an introduction to the world of opera, it can’t be recommended. There’s a ritualistic aspect in going to a theatre to watch an opera; and though the camera essentially gives you the best seat in the house, it can’t really compare to being there, just as no sound system can equal the acoustics of a theatre and the sensory overload of being sat in the audience. With this caveat in mind, the film does as good a job as it possibly can. The restoration is excellent (there’s a comparison as one of the extras), transforming the beige, washed-out hues of the original print into glorious Technicolour. The ornate set design and costumes really stand out in this lavish production, all ably captured by Czinner’s fine camerawork.
The most important aspect is, of course, the music; and much of Der Rosenkavalier is undeniably beautiful. There can be a preponderance for note-spinning, and the music that comes on when we’re being shown that something comic is going on is tiresome, but, for the most part, we are witnessing opera singers at the very peak of their powers. The final duet between Octavian and Sophie is particularly breathtakingly gorgeous. It is at such moments that you begin to appreciate the almost super-human talents of opera singers, their abilities to command their vocals to perform feats that seem beyond the limits of the human voice. None more so than Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin in the role many have said she was born to play.
However, the conducting of Herbert Von Karajan is perhaps the weak link in this staging of Der Rosenkavalier, in that you really have to work to get to the work’s subtext. It has been said that the music in Der Rosenkavalier isn’t all that different from Elektra. If you listen very carefully, you can hear moments of dissonance at work, the avant-garde undercutting the seemingly conventional and working in much the same way as Brecht’s alienation techniques to make us question just what exactly is being presented to us. But this Karajan recording almost completely obscures this technique behind flowery flourishes and sickly sweet orchestration. As a result, it’s easy to overlook the crucial darker undertones of the work. This is a society on the brink, the twilight of an era, and Strauss’ piece subtly undermines the notion of the ‘golden era’, which underpins a great deal of the opera canon. This is a world in which women are still seen as property, traded in for newer models when their looks began to fade, and marriage used as a vehicle towards status or money. Der Rosenkavalier depicts a social milieu in which love is essentially bought and sold for cash, the hard, coarse reality beneath the veneer of polite society. But all the bluntness implied is elegantly dressed in coiffured wigs and crinolines, so that the utter heartbreak at the centre of the story occurs offstage - the Marschallin retires to weep her heart out in the wings, as Sophie and Octavian (who is, of course, merely Och's younger reincarnation, as Sophie is the Marschallin's) canoodle in private. But you have to really read behind the lines to get any of this in a production, which makes Strauss’ opera appear much more conventional than it actually is.
Czinner’s film has been in and out of print on VHS and DVD over the years, establishing itself as one of the ‘must have’ cult items for a certain segment of the opera loving public. But this review is aimed at international cinema fans and as such it’s hard to recommend Der Rosenkavalier. No doubt it will be seized upon and treasured by those in the know. The rest of us may well be left wondering what all the fuss is about. GJK
