Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Cappriccio may well be the perfect opera for DVD. It is not as rare to find in the opera house as it used to be but it still has a way of getting lost in empty spaces unless one is sitting close. So, it is a pleasure to have a performance as good as this, subtitled, with excellent sound, to watch comfortably at home. And what a beautiful, witty "conversation with music" it truly is.
The singers are all excellent with fresh, well focused voices, playing well with and against each other as this paramount ensemble opera demands. Standouts for me were von Otter, a superb musician in top form, as an elegant, decadent, slightly wacky Clarion; Hawlata, as LaRoche, authoritative, sonorous, indeed stentorian and, in the end, humane, as he should be; Reiner Tröst, one of the most beautiful lyric tenor voices around, bringing much poetry and ardor to Flammand, the musician. Renée Fleming is in glorious voice but occassionally, though not very often, brings a strange "pop music" color to the voice quite alien to Strauss. It's an artistic choice I find distracting and baffling and wish she would not take. Her Countess is more country-club than aristocratic, but the vocal splendor makes this sound like quibbling. Indeed, everyone is fine, very musical, and warmly supported and encouraged from the pit. The opening sextet is played ravishingly.
The opera is staged in 1942, otherwise, like in the libretto, at the Countess' chateau outside Paris. It works well and does no violence to the spirit or letter of the work (other than some reference to horses and coaches). However, the DVD producer has grafted some shots to what otherwise seems to be a live Palais Garnier performance, to "open-up" the work, and to me these don't work well at all. Thus during the opening string sextet we see Fleming walking around the Grand Foyer of the Garnier and sitting herself in the auditorium as if she were dropping in on a rehearsal in her chateau's theatre where the characters are gathering. The idea is clever but it proves discontinuous with the performance of the opera itself. Similarly, the great "mondschein" interlude with its ecstatic horn melody later passing on to the strings is visually marred by shots of the Countess and her brother at a box, poet and composer at an opposite box, nodding at each other while waiting for the Final Scene of the opera the latter two have composed for the Countess to begin. Well, to me this is a tasteless distraction, a disastrous lapse: the music is some of the most beautiful and eloquent Strauss ever wrote, it needs nothing but itself. Shots of the orchestra playing it would have sufficed. Other than this gaucherie and the earlier miscalculation, the production is quite witty, energetic and alive.
The overall spirit, drive, and verve of the musical realization and the production, with the added treat of the Palais Garnier setting make any quibbles I may have something to note but dispense with in deciding to acquire this splendid performance. It will give much joy. Repeatedly.
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