Intermezzo, Scottish Opera, Seven magazine review

Intermezzo, Scottish Opera, Seven magazine review

Scottish Opera extract maximum laughs from an under-performed Strauss gem. Rating * * * *

Anita Bader and Roland Wood both excel in "Intermezzo" by Strauss  

By John Allison 4:43PM BST 08 Apr 2011

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Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo has been described as music’s finest existing portrait of a marriage. That is surely true, yet it is hardly a flattering one, around nine parts bickering to one part reconciliation.

However, there was no obvious collateral damage among all the couples squeezed into Glasgow’s Theatre Royal for Scottish Opera’s rewarding new production: it is testament to Strauss’s genius that such a depressing scenario can also be so witty.

Though it is seldom thought of as such, Intermezzo is in many ways the ultimate verismo opera, a more genuinely realistic slice of life than any of the works by his Italian contemporaries.

Strauss had already composed such autobiographical scores as Ein Heldenleben and the Sinfonia domestica when he completed Intermezzo in 1924, basing it on an event 22 years earlier when his feisty, temperamental wife Pauline had opened a letter mistakenly addressed to him and immediately filed for divorce.

Away in (of all places) the Isle of Wight during an English conducting engagement, Strauss had to return home to Munich and spend several days calming her down.

The letter from the Berlin floozie Mieze Mücke had been intended for a conductor by the name of Stransky, sometimes jokingly nicknamed Straussky, but the scars of this incident ran deep. Intermezzo paints Robert Storch (the Strauss character) as the epitome of reasonableness, even if he does call Christine Storch (Pauline) an “insufferable battleaxe”, and resurrects another family incident involving Pauline’s mild dalliance with a nice young man who turned out to be on the make.

Strauss labelled his opera a Bürgerliche Komödie, or “bourgeois comedy”, and it is in many ways an operetta without the tunes – for once, not meant derogatorily.

Naturalistic and lacking big vocal “numbers”, it consists of a string of short scenes divided up by vivid orchestral interludes, a structure dismissed by some as an experiment.

Sadly, and undeservedly, it remains a rarity and still awaits a production in London.

One obstacle may be that Intermezzo is difficult to stage, but Scottish Opera’s debuting Austro-German production team manages well. Wolfgang Quetes’s direction is fluid and funny, and the scene changes are fluent – even extending to a charming tobogganing episode.

Inspired by Klimt, right down to the wallpaper, Manfred Kaderk’s set is dominated by images of The Kiss, symbolically sliced in half by the curtain and emphasising the loneliness of Pauline’s solitary dining table.

In an amusing moment in the first scene, Robert Storch is packing musical scores for his two-month trip and briefly brandishes his conductor’s baton.

Maybe it is intended as an in-joke about Scottish Opera’s beleaguered music director, Francesco Corti, but if so it backfires. Corti’s interpretation is unfailingly lively and considerate of the singers (no mean achievement).

It may have been bad timing for Scottish Opera to put its orchestra on part-time contract shortly before tackling such a demanding work, but the musicians still deliver sinewy, virtuosic playing full of Straussian glow.

The Munich-trained soprano Anita Bader is compelling in the central role of Christine. She may not possess a voice of typical Straussian richness, but she rides the orchestra and has the charisma for a part that requires both shrewishness and elegance.

The baritone Roland Wood sings warmly as Robert, and though the tenor Nicky Spence sports generous tone as the dim-witted Baron Lummer – Christine’s temporary distraction – he is far too pleased with himself.

The rest of the cast is strong, especially Sarah Redgwick as the chambermaid Anna, Richard Rowe as the “other conductor” Stroh, and Jeremy Huw Williams as the cynical Councillor.

With so many British singers here, it would have made better sense to do this densely conversational piece in English – there are fine sopranos here who could have been cast as Pauline. Even so, it was good to hear the native touch Bader brought to the German, and my only real regret is that Scottish Opera’s run was so short.

This review also appears in Seven magazine, free with The Sunday Telegraph

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