It's About Time

The thing about Der Rosenkavalier is that I always seem to find new ways of looking at it each time I see a performance. Furthermore, while I have seen all sorts of experiments in staging Mozart and Wagner, some of which have exhibited some departures that were both clever and original, it is hard to imagine Rosenkavalier "working" unless it is "played straight." The story just has too many things to tell in its intended setting to let revisionism get in the way. Thus, all originality lies in finding the best ways to play the cards that Richard Strauss and, more importantly, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, have dealt the performers.

This time around I realized that Hofmannsthal had as deep a sense of philosophy as he had for human psychology, which is usually seen as the "heart" of this particular opera. In particular he has constructed a script that explores the very nature of time with a depth of perception that rivals the work of Augustine. We have a tendency to think that Hofmannsthal says his piece about time when the Marschallin reflects (the most deliberate pun in the script) on the image of her aging self in her mirror; but the Marschallin's is but one mirror is a sort of house of mirrors, leading to a dazzling compounding of reflections. Indeed, it is through the Marschallin that we appreciate just how unreflective Octavian is in Act I, how Sophie is not much better in Act II, and how little both of them grow in Act III. Nevertheless, it is in this house of mirrors that we discover (both dramatically and musically) how much of Act III is a reflection of the episodes in Act I.

The really Augustinian coup that Hofmannsthal pull off, however, in regard to time is the way in which the past and the future emerge as tightly braided to the present. This is why the three voices of the trio are so close that they are always weaving in and out of each other. The Marschallin finally sees her past reflected in the present of Octavian and his future with Sophie, and it is through seeing this that she can now let go of Octavian not only without regret or resignation but almost with a newfound happiness in the wisdom that age has brought her.

Furthermore, lest I sound too disparaging of Octavian, I have to say that Joyce DiDonato, in the performance she is currently giving at San Francisco Opera, has endowed him with one crucial insight. After the first two acts of all the variations on the ceremonial bows of the nobility, once everything is patched up with Faninal, Octavian's future father-in-law executes one last fumbled attempt at one of those bows; and Octavian simply extends his hand to shake. This is why Rosenkavalier needs the setting in which it was conceived, Vienna in the early years of the reign of the Empress Maria Theresa. As the world begins to yield to Faninal's bourgeoisie, it is also just beginning to experience the insights of the Enlightenment. If those insights would ultimately lead to a Reign of Terror in France, in Vienna Octavian is presented to us by Hofmannsthal as at least one member of the nobility to accepts the need for change and embraces it as much as the Marschallin has learned to embrace the need for change in her own life.

As I said, there is so much we can learn each time this opera is performed!