By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 5 October 2006]

Conventional wisdom tells us that Strauss’s “comedy for music” is at best a Viennese masquerade, at worst a succession of highlights for which we pay with extended longueurs – a bit like Wagner, except the highlights come sugar-coated. That’s not the way it appears in David McVicar’s classic production. In a performance as good as this, Der Rosenkavalier becomes a continuous thread of voices, instrumental and vocal, that coalesce into a witty, sentimental drama. The result is to leave the audience moved as much as entertained, which certainly was the case on Wednesday.