SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Premiered in 1942, Richard Strauss’ and Clemens Krauss’ one-act “Conversation Piece for Music” about the nature of opera is the last of the composer’s works in the genre. A work of unusual urbanity for the often simplistic medium of lyric theater, it abounds in irony, ambiguity, anachronism, and paradox, which last may be termed one of the greatest joys of art.

The central question propounded by Krauss’ libretto is the age-old one about words and music in opera. Which has the greater importance? Is it Prima la musica e poi le parole, as in the title of Salieri’s one-act piece premiered in 1786, or should it be the other way around? Capriccio incarnates the two contending arts in the persons of the composer Flamand and the poet Olivier, on hand to create an entertainment for the Countess Madeleine’s birthday. Very soon, they realize they are both in love with her, so that, like music and words, they are rivals for her preference.

Which she will choose is the biggest question, and it is left unanswered at the end, after a celebrated final scene of rapturous lyrical musings set forth in the Countess’ soprano voice. But the audience may well ask itself what she in turn represents: Krauss’ text sets forth a variety of views about what opera is or should be, and one view of the Countess would see her as the representative of the sophisticated public that artists hope for more often than they get, a public willing and able to take an interest in serious questions of aesthetics. That is probably the right view, and it carries the corollary that the eight servants who express their puzzlement over the artistic shenanigans of their employers must stand for the philistine element. Yet Krauss, and Strauss, treat their expostulations with a light hand, and it is possible to regard them as a welcome breath of fresh air and common-sense after the relatively abstruse speculations of the main story.

I spoke of anachronism and paradox. Capriccio’s anachronism is partly an inherent quality shared with most operas, in the sense that characters from an earlier period are often found singing music of a later one. Krauss set his story near Paris in 1775, at the time of Gluck’s operatic reforms. But in this production director Robert McQueen has chosen to transfer the action to the late 1930s. The two periods have something important in common: one narrowly preceded the French Revolution, the other the Nazi occupation of France, but the parallel is not especially illuminating for the purposes of the opera. McQueen’s note in the program recounts his and his set and costume designer’s inquiry into “which 20th century setting might give us a period as artistically rich and engaging” as the original setting. He says nothing about why such an inquiry and transference should have been necessary in the first place. One result is that the gap between the characters’ time and that of Strauss’ music is virtually eliminated. Interestingly, however, a different kind of anachronism results, for we find references to the king, and to Gluck and his rival Piccinni, as contemporaries of our 20th-century characters. Is this a flaw, or does it help to bring the central concerns of the opera into sharper focus just by making us actually think about period?

That is another question I prefer to leave unanswered. As for paradox, one of the most stimulating aspects of Strauss’ masterly and delicate score is its melding of a fundamentally romantic idiom with an utterly unromantic general style.

How does all this play out in Pacific Opera Victoria’s production? Finally, we have a question to which an unequivocal answer can be given: dramatically, musically, and scenically, this is a Capriccio as ravishing and touching as it is thought-provoking. For once–a rarity in North American productions of works with European social roots–McQueen never puts a social foot wrong so far as the relations between the classes are concerned. There is warmth in the relationship between the Countess and her Major-Domo, but no inappropriate intimacy. Aside from one or two tiny points–a joke about how hard it is to tell which way up a modern painting should be viewed that is repeated too many times with diminishing returns; one indulgence in the directorial taste for having a character stand on a chair–everything we see on stage is cogent, elegant, and graceful. Enhanced by the subtle color changes in Alan Brodie’s lighting (including a wonderful moment when the servants bring on and light something like forty candles), Christina Poddubiuk’s set is lovely to look at. Her costumes, too, are handsome and apt, though the Countess’ initial appearance is trousers set me to thinking: would a lady of fashion in 1930s Paris have dressed thus? A little research suggests the answer that, like the intellectually inquiring woman she is, the Countess is at the forefront of fashion–it was in the 1930s that photographs of Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn began to make trousers an acceptable garb for women. (Did you know that an 1800 law, stipulating that any Parisienne wishing to wear them “must present herself to Paris’ main police station to obtain authorization,” is still on the books in France?)

Victoria’s opera-lovers are especially in the possession of Timothy Vernon as the company’s long-standing artistic director. Under his leadership, the orchestral component of the evening was finely realized, from the string sextet that replaces a conventional overture in this ground-breaking work, through to the sumptuous yet still lightly scored final scene.

So strong was the sense that this was a true ensemble production that I have felt it appropriate to leave writing about the singers till last. The cast, without exception, was splendid in both vocal and dramatic terms. Kurt Lehmann and Joshua Hopkins made a convincing pair or rivals as Flamand and Olivier. James Westman’s Count and Norine Burgess’ Clairon sang well and worked up a suitable level of chemistry. There were excellent contributions from Michael Colvin and Virginia Hatfield as the Italian tenor and soprano, Doug MacNaughton as a calmly authoritative Major-Domo, and J. Patrick Raftery as Monsieur Taupe the prompter. Coming into the cast at short notice, Brian Bannatyne-Scott offered a consummate and witty portrait of the materialistic yet dedicated theater director La Roche, a more complex latter-day reincarnation of Frank in Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor (which shared the evening with Salieri’s Prima la musica e poi le parole back in 1786).

Last and by no means least, I must salute a superbly assured and graceful assumption of the Countess’ crucial role. Born in Calgary of American parents, Erin Wall was making her company debut. She looked gorgeous, and sang with comparably gorgeous style and expression. Despite a somewhat wide vibrato, the voice successfully encompassed all the facets of one of Strauss’ supreme soprano roles. This was a performance of powerful humanity, penetrating thought, and caressing beauty. I look forward to her future achievements with agreeable confidence.

Bernard Jacobson