Strauss - Capriccio, February 25, 27, March 2, 4, and 6, 2010. Royal Theatre. In German with English surtitles
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Operas > Capriccio

Capriccio

A Conversation Piece for Music

by Clemens Krauss and Richard Strauss
Music by Richard Strauss

February 25, March 2, 4, and 6, 2010, at 8 pm
Matinée February 27 at 3 pm
Broadcast on CBC Radio Two, June 19, 2010, at 1 pm

Synopsis

Strauss originally set Capriccio in a luxurious chateau near Paris at the time when Gluck began his reform of opera, about 1775. Marie Antoinette had just become Queen of France; the French Revolution was yet to come. POV's production is set in the elegant 18th century family home of the Count and Countess, but in the late 1930s – the time in which the opera was written.

Scene 1
The Count and his sister the Countess Madeleine, are hosting a house party at which a group of artists will rehearse the entertainment for the Countess's approaching birthday. As the opera opens, the Countess is listening raptly to a charming string sextet by the composer Flamand, while the theatre director La Roche sleeps. Flamand and the poet Olivier watch the Countess intently and adoringly – and quickly realize that they are both in love with her. They agree they are friendly rivals in both love and art – words against music.

La Roche wakes up, observing contentedly that he sleeps best to gentle music. Flamand and Olivier are irritated that their destiny lies in such hands as his, but La Roche counters that without his staging, their works are nothing but paper. The discussion turns to the operas of Gluck, whom Flamand and Olivier admire, but La Roche holds forth on the merits of the Italian composer Piccinni.

(The score here quotes the overture from Gluck's Iphigénie en Aulide, whose 1774 premiere sparked often violent conflict between "Gluckists" and "Piccinnists". Gluck wanted to restore the balance of music and words in opera, making the drama of the work more important than the virtuoso singers who dominated Italian opera with their extravagant ornamentation and brilliant embellishments.)

La Roche complains that Gluck's orchestra drowns out the singers – he hankers for the good old days of Italian opera. While Flamand and Olivier scorn the idea of catering to the masses, La Roche calls for human characters that will appeal to the man in the street – a musical comedy, beautiful arias, lots of spectacle, pretty girls. Talk turns to the charming actress Clairon, an old flame of Olivier's.

Noticing that the Countess is still under the spell of Flamand's music, La Roche adds that it's a pity he slept through it himself. All three speak admiringly of her beauty and charm. And a widow adds La Roche meaningfully, before whisking them off to get ready to rehearse Olivier's new play.

Scene 2
The Count and Countess enter. Unlike her brother, Madeleine has been carried away by Flamand's music. She comments on the music of Couperin – pretty but shallow – and of Rameau – superb, but spoiled for her by the bad manners of the man (meanwhile the orchestra quotes snippets from these composers). The Count tells her she needs to distinguish the man from his music and suggests that her response to Flamand's composition is coloured by her attraction to him. She counters that his praise for Olivier's play has a lot to do with his interest in the actress Clairon. The Count then points out that Madeleine has two admirers and asks which she will choose. Perhaps neither, she responds, for choosing either means I must lose one.

Scene 3
The others return, and La Roche reviews the programme for the birthday celebrations: Flamand's piece, followed by Olivier's play, in which the Count and Clairon will act the parts of the lovers, and finally, a spectacular production by La Roche's company, featuring fantastic tableaux, a magnificent ballet, and singers with astonishing voices and high trills, performing real Italian opera. But La Roche refuses to reveal any more details.

Scene 4
The famous actress Clairon arrives, and everyone is aflutter with admiration. Clairon and the Count read a love scene from Olivier's play; unaccompanied by the orchestra, their dialogue is entirely words – pure poetry, with no music. It culminates in a love sonnet (Kein Andres, das mir so im Herzen loht). Clairon compliments the Count on his reading of the lines, and off they go to the small theatre in the next room to work with La Roche on staging the play. La Roche forbids Olivier to attend the rehearsal, telling him to trust in the director's genius.

Olivier tells the Countess that the Count's reading of the love sonnet was addressed to the wrong person. He then recites the verses directly and passionately to her. As he is speaking, Flamand begins to improvise a little melody on the harpsichord and then, inspired, rushes off to set the words to music.

Scene 5
When the horrified Olivier tries to stop Flamand from meddling with his precious verse, the Countess tells him to wait and see. She then teases him, asking if he has no prose to deliver now that the two of them are alone. He expresses his ardent devotion, but she has half an eye on Flamand who is happily spinning poetry into song. Olivier entreats her to choose between music and poetry and crown the victor, just as Flamand rushes in, flourishing the completed manuscript.

Scene 6
Flamand sings the sonnet to his own harpsichord accompaniment.

Nothing else flames so in my heart,
No, Lady, nothing is there on earth's whole face,
Nothing else that I could sigh for as for you,
In vain would Venus herself come down to grant my will.
What joy, what pain your gentle eye bestows;
And if a glance should heighten all that pain,
The next restore my fondest hope and bliss entire;
Two glances signify then life or death.
And, though I lived five hundred thousand years,
Save you, miraculous fair, there could not be
Another creature hold sway over me.
Through fresh veins I must needs let flow my blood;
My own with you are filled to overflowing
And new love then could find not room nor pause.

The Countess is deeply moved; she feels that the music and the words seem always to have been waiting for one another; the two together transcend either alone. Meanwhile Olivier mutters furiously that Flamand has stolen his poem:

The rhymes destroyed, the sentences dismembered . . . Who can hear the slightest sense in the text? . . . This lucky man climbs my words like a ladder to victory! . . . Is it now his poem, or still my own?

The Countess declares that the sonnet now belongs to her, and Flamand agrees enthusiastically. The Countess tells the sulking poet:

No matter how you may resent it, dear friend, you are both inseparably united in this sonnet of mine!

Things are not about to get any better for the poet, for now La Roche comes to discuss some brilliant cuts he intends to make to Olivier's play. Joking about the proposed amputation, the two depart, leaving Flamand alone with the Countess.

Scene 7
Now it is Flamand's turn to declare his fervent love to Madeleine and ask her to make a choice. She vacillates:

Everything is such a tangle – Words are singing, music speaks!

Flamand tenderly recalls how he first came to love Madeleine one afternoon in her library when she, unaware of his presence, read for a while as he watched, enchanted. As dusk fell, she left, and he picked up the volume she had left open and in the twilight read the lines by Pascal:

In Love, silence is better than speech. There is something of eloquence in silence that is stronger than words and more persuasive.

Madeleine asks why Flamand, a musician, is resorting to words. He retorts that his music does not yet seem to have touched her heart. She finally agrees to give him her answer the next morning at eleven, in the library where he first found love; overcome with excitement, he rushes off. The Countess contemplates her dilemma. As the rehearsal in the next room winds up, she calls the major-domo to serve chocolate.

Scene 8
The Count enters, exuberantly reporting on Clairon's charm and revelling in her praise for his acting. Madeleine warns him that he has been captivated by the actress's flattery. She then tells her brother that both the poet and the musician have declared their love for her. The Count tells her that in a choice between words and music, he'd stay with the words.

Scene 9
The others enter, and Clairon graciously praises the Count's spirit and compliments him on his imperturbability:

Our prompter had fallen asleep . . . and the Count went on reading with bravura, not even once forgetting a line.

As they all savour their chocolate, La Roche brings in a pair of dancers to perform three short dances – a Passepied, a Gigue, and a Gavotte – in the style of Couperin and Rameau.

During the Passepied, La Roche chats with the Count, expounding on the beauty and grace of the young ballerina, his newest discovery, whom he is grooming for a great future, both on stage and off.

As the Gigue begins, Olivier approaches Clairon, but she is interested in neither his flattery nor his attempts to make peace; it is clear they had a love affair that ended badly. As Clairon walks away from the poet, the observant La Roche notes that Olivier is unlikely to play an impressive role in her memoirs (the real-life Hyppolyte Clairon, a leading actress-courtesan of the Comédie Française did indeed publish her memoirs in 1799).

Only for the Gavotte do the dancers have the attention of the entire company. They finish amid general applause and fulsome compliments from the Count:

Your performance charmed and delighted me. Just as our thoughts free the mind from the body and lift us into a higher world, so does dance overcome the force of gravity. The body seems to hover, accompanied by moving music.

The Count then points out to Flamand that here his music merely a delicious accompaniment. Flamand defends his art vigourously: If it were not for Music, no one on earth would ever dream of moving a muscle. Olivier chimes in, saying that music and dance are constrained by rhythm and that only poetry offers true freedom and clarity of thought. Flamand insists that music is replete with meaning – In a single chord you experience a world!

La Roche weighs in on behalf of theatre as the supreme art. The Countess agrees:

The theatre unveils for us the secrets of reality. In its magic mirror we discover ourselves.

The debate continues. Olivier: Poetry is the mother of all arts. Flamand: Music is the root from which everything springs . . . The cry of pain preceded language. Olivier: The real depth of the Tragic can only be expressed when a poet puts it into words.

The Countess reminds them that it is possible to create a musical tragedy, at which the Count suddenly cries,

Stop! One more step and we stand before the abyss! We're already face to face with an opera!

Olivier complains that composers and poets obstruct one another dreadfully and waste untold effort in bringing an opera into the world. The Count adds,

An opera is an absurd thing. Orders are sung; affairs of state are discussed in duets; people dance on graves and suicide takes place melodically.

Clairon chimes in that she wouldn't mind people dying with an aria on their lips, except that she finds the words so much worse than the music. The Countess brings forward Gluck as an example of someone who makes the words and the music equal. At this, the Count launches into a complaint about the unspeakable boredom of recitatives. La Roche pontificates on the deafening noise of the orchestra, which drowns out the singers, forcing them to shriek. He waxes nostalgic on the subject of song and the beauty of the human voice, mourning the great tradition of Italian song: Bel Canto is slowly dying!

To illustrate the magnificence of Bel Canto, La Roche brings in two singers to perform an ornamental little duet from an Italian opera with a text by Metastasio. The words are a sorrowful lovers' farewell:

Farewell, my life, farewell, do not weep for my fate . . . Farewell, light of my eyes.

The Countess observes that the text doesn't seem to suit the music. Flamand and Olivier agree that it takes a certain art to use a cheerful tune to express great sorrow.

The Count and Clairon have a flirtatious interchange, with Clairon agreeing to let the Count escort her back to Paris to read lines with her.

The Countess persuades La Roche to reveal to the group a few details of the grandiose production he is preparing for her birthday celebration. There are two parts, he says. First, a depiction of the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus. La Roche explains the story to his befuddled audience: after Zeus and Metis conceived the child, Zeus swallowed the mother, and the daughter grew inside him until she emerged, fully armed, from his head.

Carried away with amusement, his listeners join in an octet (The Laughing Ensemble) and mock the notion of trying to depict this preposterous story on stage. Clairon calls it a bizarre depiction of the joys of fatherhood. The Count, convinced that theatre people are nuts, cracks up at the image of Athena riding in full armour out of Zeus' head to celebrate his sister's birthday. The Italian soprano rhapsodizes about the cake, while the tenor worries they won't be paid for the gig and then berates the soprano for drinking too much.

Flamand imitates the orchestration for the moment when the goddess, with shield and spear, slips out from the head of her father: Drums and Cymbals! Tschin! Tschin! Boom! Boom! Olivier anticipates the wonders of La Roche's directorial abilities as Hephaestos swings his hammer to break open Zeus' head so the baby goddess can be born. His skull throbs! He's relieved!

The Countess is enchanted by La Roche's intensity and his wild imagination, and a little touched by his seriousness and naïveté. La Roche castigates the younger generation for their irreverence and ignorance in making fun of mythology.

Nothing is sacred! . . . No understanding of my inspiration! . . . Present-day youth has no respect!

Seeing that La Roche is offended, the Countess soothes him, explaining that although they are impressed by his brilliant idea, they can't imagine how on earth it could be staged – We're just amateurs. But she's sure he'll pull it off with his great skill as a director.

And what is the subject of the second part of your spectacle? she asks. The Fall of Carthage, responds La Roche grandly, and this breathtaking production will pull out all the stops –

the town in flames, a sea of fire . . . four thousand candles . . . a galley of my own construction, pitching and tossing! Lightning and thunderbolts in the middle of the stage . . . the sails in flames - a burning wreck! Tidal wave in the harbour! The palace falls in ruins.

Flamand and Olivier scoff at what is sure to come next – At the end, a gorgeous ballet in the ruins! Tempers start to flare as a second octet, The Quarrelling Ensemble, begins, and everyone again weighs in with an opinion.

Flamand and Olivier are appalled:

The scenery is playing the leading role! . . . Words or Music? Ha! The question is Flight Machines versus Trap-Doors! . . . Why even have an orchestra when the thunder machine will do so much better? . . . On top of all this they will sing Italian! Trills! Runs! Cadenzas!

The poet and the musician declare they will have nothing to do with the production.

As Flamand and Olivier are ganging up on La Roche, the Countess expresses her dismay at their brutality and her distress for La Roche. The Count watches with avid glee:

Ha! The noble arts are at loggerheads . . . their apostles are squabbling among themselves. They show their teeth and start to brawl! . . . La Roche in a fix! An exquisite sight! Ha! . . . How will he get out of it?

Clairon, however, is confident that La Roche can take care of himself and that he will shortly strike back.

The tenor gives up all hope of collecting his fee, then joins in as the tipsy soprano sings a reprise of their duet, this time bidding a tender, heartbroken farewell to their money.

La Roche then launches into a monumental tirade, scolding both poet and composer for arrogantly judging him while they themselves have done nothing for the theatre. He tells them their little poems and chamber pieces, while nice enough in their way, have neither the dramatic structure nor the human passion essential for great theatre. He agrees that public taste has become vulgar and brainless, but tells them,

You despise these goings on and yet you tolerate them. You share the guilt because of your silence.

La Roche goes on to glorify his role in preserving culture, and tradition:

I serve the eternal laws of the theatre. I preserve . . . the art of our fathers . . . I reverently preserve the old, hoping patiently for the fruitful new, expecting the works of genius of our time! Where are the masterpieces that touch the heart of the people, that reflect their souls? Where are they? I cannot find them, hard though I search.

He challenges Flamand and Olivier to either come up with a theatrical masterpiece of their own or stop criticizing him.

I want to people my stage with human beings! People who resemble us and speak in our language! Let their sorrows move us deeply and let their joys fill our hearts with gladness!

He finishes in top form:

On my tombstone you will read the inscription: Here lies La Roche, the unforgettable, the immortal Theatre Director. The Friend of Comedy, the patron of Tragic Art. A father of the stage, guardian angel of artists. The gods loved him, and mankind admired him! Amen.

This bombastic, but deeply felt manifesto is greeted with stormy applause and Clairon's witty La Roche, you are monumental! The soprano bursts into tipsy sobs and is led away by the irritated tenor.

The Countess picks up on La Roche's challenge and commands Flamand and Olivier to work together in harmony to create a glorious new work. They latch eagerly onto the idea as the Count moans that now he'll be the victim of an opera.

Talk now turns to practical matters. La Roche starts giving advice. To Flamand: Give the aria its due! Always consider the singers – keep the orchestra quiet! To Olivier: Don't put the Primadonna's scene at the beginning. Make the verses comprehensible and repeat them often so there's a chance they'll be understood.

Then comes the question of a subject for the opera. Olivier suggests Ariadne auf Naxos, but Flamand dismisses it as having been done too often before (to an orchestral quotation from Strauss's own opera by the same name). Flamand then proposes Daphne, but Olivier objects that staging the heroine's transformation into a tree would pose a problem (as it had in Strauss's 1938 opera Daphne, until Clemens Krauss came up with the solution.)

Ironically, the Count, who doesn't want an opera at all, comes up with the topic: an opera exactly as La Roche wants, depicting the conflicts and events of the very day they have been living. La Roche is a little hesitant (Will it be too indiscreet? It would be a challenge to stage). However, everyone is intrigued, and Flamand and Olivier are eager to begin. As the guests prepare to leave, the Countess bids them adieu and exits.

Scene 10
The Count and Clairon depart for Paris, and La Roche ushers out the singers, assuring them their money will be ready the next day. As Flamand and Olivier prepare to depart, still jousting over whether the words or the music will have pride of place, La Roche admonishes them not to forget his big scene – the high point of the piece – in which he will direct everyone in a rehearsal. And, above all, they must take care to give him a really great exit.

La Roche then leaves with Flamand and Olivier.

Scene 11
Eight servants enter. As they tidy up, they comment on the goings on – the soprano's appetite for cake, the shouting about theatre (it's all Greek to one; another explains that the director wants to make some theatre reforms before he's dead; a third suggests they may soon let servants have roles in opera). All agree that the Count is looking for a tender adventure and the Countess is in love but doesn't know with whom – and to make up her mind she lets them write her an opera.

Their opinions on opera are much like the Count's:

They have it sung so you don't understand the words. And that is very necessary, or else you would rack your brains about the muddled content.

They mention their favourite entertainments – tightrope dancers, marionettes, that ghastly play about Coriolanus, who stabs his own daughter! As the servants wonder about putting on an amusing show for the Countess's birthday, the major-domo gives them the good news that as soon as they serve supper they'll be free for the evening. They go off happily.

Scene 12
The prompter, Monsieur Taupe (his name is French for mole), emerges unexpectedly from the small theatre where he had been left asleep and forgotten. He tells the major-domo about the life of a prompter:

I am the invisible ruler of a magical world . . . Only when I sit in my prompt box does the great wheel of the theatre begin to turn. The deep thoughts of our poets – I whisper them to myself in a quiet voice, and everything comes to life. Reality is mirrored in front of me . . . My own whispering lulls me to sleep. If I sleep I become an event. The actors stop speaking, the audience wakes up!

The major-domo, politely amused, offers M. Taupe something to eat and promises to arrange a ride back to Paris for him.

Scene 13
It is evening and the moon has risen. The Countess enters. The major-domo tells her that Olivier will meet her to discuss the ending of the opera – the next morning at eleven, in the library. She is alarmed, realizing that Flamand will be disappointed to find Olivier in the library instead of her.

And as for me, she wonders, I'm supposed to determine the opera's ending . . . Is it the words that move my heart or the music that speaks more strongly? She sings the sonnet, interrupting herself partway through:

It's fruitless to try to separate them. Words and music are fused into one . . . One art redeemed by the other!

Regarding herself in a mirror, she asks herself what to do.

In choosing the one, you will lose the other. Doesn't one always lose when one wins?

Again she asks the Madeleine in the mirror,

Do you want to be consumed between two fires? You mirrored image of Madeleine in love – can you advise me, can you help me find the ending, the ending for their opera? Is there one that is not trivial?

The major-domo announces that supper is served; Madeleine smiles at the mirror and walks into the dining room, humming the sonnet.

Maureen Woodall

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