Cosmetic Rosenkavalier; Spellbinding Trittico

Véronique Gens debuts at the Marschallin, Asmik Grigorian nails Puccini's hat-trick in Paris

Véronique Gens (Marschallin) Asmik Grigorian (Suor Angelica) Pictures © Vincent Pontet, Guergana Damianova

Krzysztof Warlikowski’s new production of Der Rosenkavalier at Paris’s art deco Théâtre des Champs-Élysées - opened in 1913, when Strauss’s opera was only two years old - pretends to give a ‘new look’ to Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s ‘comedy for music’. But beneath the surface, it traduces not just the authors, but a remarkable cast of singers as well as their Parisian audiences.

As in Warlikowski’s recent Katya Kabanova for Munich, the designer Małgorzata Szczęśniak provides sets that are undoubtedly chic, but they are clinical, generic and not obviously Viennese. Her costumes rarely flatter the singers. The Marschallin is conceived as an ageing diva of stage or screen, rock-chick-dressed-as-lamb, as if she has fallen on such hard times that she has turned to streetwalking, and saddled with the most hideous wigs I have ever seen in this opera. Poor Sophie is robbed of charm in an unbecoming yellow dress and retro cloche-style hat - and, in Act 3, a blouse emblazoned with Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse. Octavian’s casual, pop-icon gear suits the production’s milieu but not really the character of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Cherubino-like young Count. Ochs is played as a by-word for ageing male boorishness - again nothing radical here.