Time as a great healer or gentle eraser is a large part of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. If musing on transience and ageing are prevailing themes, that’s neatly balanced by the light entertainment provided by the parody of social change. As a comedy of manners and meditation on change, both ideas are sharply drawn in this first revival of Bruno Ravella’s Garsington production, originally unveiled in 2021.
Ravella and costume designer Gary McCann neatly indicate the passage of time in handsome designs that move from a Regency four poster bed and a fin de siècle salon (with wonderfully ornate wall mouldings) to Herr von Faninal’s grand Stadtpalais. By Act 3, a neon-lit village inn encloses a shady room, bearing kinship to a brothel, where the Marschallin resolves the emotional logjam between her erstwhile toyboy Octavian, his sweetheart Sophie and the lecherous parvenu Baron Ochs who looks like a cross between Toad of Toad Hall and a Scottish laird. During Act 1’s levee the Marschallin emerges in a sumptuous Christian Dior dress and by the end appears in a stunning couture ball gown. Elsewhere, costumes linked to the 1950s are a recurring presence. Adding a further twist to changing eras, Octavian carries a sword and a policeman brandishes a pistol, an anachronistic feature mirrored by Strauss’s Viennese waltzes to create their own nostalgia for time passing.
What makes this production particularly special is the casting of three superb female leads – a mezzo and two sopranos. Vocal timbres are nicely differentiated, and the ease with which the singers communicate with one another is convincing, no less so than in the opening scene where Niamh O’Sullivan’s boyish Octavian and Matilda Sterby’s dignified Marschallin (both making their Garsington debuts) form a credible partnership. And how good to hear O’Sullivan’s mezzo colouring, with such even tone across her range. No less impressive is her ability to convey meaning behind every gesture, her facial expressions and sustained emotional engagement a template for all aspiring opera singers. Sterby’s fulsome soprano sounds occasionally forced in her upper reaches, but she inhabits her noble status with great poise, her “stop the clocks” soliloquy intensely wrought. Completing the trio is a pure-toned Soraya Mafi who brings an adolescent spark to Sophie, her innocence and vitality beautifully conveyed, and fearless when chirruping about the birds in heaven.
If there’s one disappointment, it’s the overcooked portrayal of Baron Ochs from Andreas Bauer Kanabas. Yes, his sense of self-importance is underlined and, yes, the wig and red whiskers both amuse, but the voice, notwithstanding an impressive low range, booms across the stage. Accordingly, decibels rose in Herr Faninal’s salon, with Ben McAteer as the up-and-coming Faninal being no exception as a contender for winner of a plus-sized voice. Curiously, the use of Eberhard Kloke’s slimmed down orchestral version (created during Covid) is designed to enable singers to be audible without strain. Instead, we heard singing at full tilt.
Elsewhere, there is much to enjoy from various cameo roles including Robert Murray’s opportunistic reporter Valzacchi, his power-dressed accomplice Siân Griffiths as Annina, and Egor Zhuravskii’s Italian tenor. Just a pity he’s hidden from view for the first part of his ardently sung Puccini style aria, but his arrival as a gardener is a welcome move. Ravella also makes clever use of his extended cast in Act 3’s masquerade with the appearance of half a dozen pregnant girls and their red-headed offspring all, of course, sired by Ochs. While the Trio feels oddly placed within its sleazy surroundings, the singing held me captive and, as it should be, the evening’s emotional high-water mark.
Below stage and making his Garsington debut, Downie Dear mostly draws ravishing sounds from the Philharmonia Orchestra. If one ignores some jangling piano tones (and the instrumental reduction), Strauss’s score scrubs up well, the players clearly enjoying themselves under the conductor’s well-judged tempi. In short, this is an unmissable production.
David Truslove
Der Rosenkavalier
Music: Richard Strauss
Libretto: Hugo von Hofmannsthal – sung in German with English supertitles
Co-production with Santa Fe Opera and Irish National Opera
Cast and Production:
The Marschallin – Matilda Sterby; Baron Ochs – Andreas Bauer Kanabas; Octavian – Niamh O’Sullivan; Sophie – Soraya Mafi; Herr von Faninal – Ben McAteer; Marianne Leitmetzerin – Gweneth Ann Rand; Valzacchi – Robert Murray; Annina – Siân Griffiths; An Italian tenor –Egor Zhuravskii; A notary – James Geidt; A commissar of police; Simon Wilding; The Marschallin’s major-domo – SangEup Son; Three noble daughters – Ana-Carmen Balestra, Llinos Haf Jones, Clover Kayne; A milliner – Ceferina Penny; A animal seller – Rhys Meilyr;
Director – Bruno Ravella; Designer – Gary McCann; Lighting – Malcolm Rippeth; Philharmonia Orchestra; Garsington Opera Chorus; Garsington Opera Youth Chorus; Conductor – Finnegan Downie Dear
Garsington Opera, Wormsley Estate, Buckinghamshire, 28 May 2026
Photos: © Julian Guidera