At 52, she understands that time is limited, though she considers herself in “the prime of my career,” she said in an interview at her sunny Upper West Side penthouse. It has been a while since she introduced a major new role.

Fleming is up to and where she is heading, particularly in opera. Yet it has been a little hard to figure out what Ms. Fleming has reassured her admirers through some rewarding performances, most recently a concert with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Fabio Luisi, in which she gave a sensitive account of Mahler’s Rückert Lieder and let loose in three demanding scenes from American operas by Samuel Barber and Bernard Herrmann. But was “America’s favorite soprano,” the “people’s diva,” as she has been called, pulling back from her career? Fleshed out by the composer’s lush orchestrations, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, and given voice by stars new and old, Lyric Opera’s Capriccio is a feast for the senses and the intellect.įor tickets, call all sounded intriguing. Just as Mozart’s Don Giovanni referenced Lyric Opera’s own distinguished history, it seems fitting that Richard Strauss’s Capriccio should follow, with its wider musings on the history and theory of opera itself. Rather, it serves to distance the opera’s heated theoretical discussions by removing them from their historical context, thereby making them seem almost peripheral or incidental to the plot. While not unattractive aesthetically, such a transposition makes no sense from an artistic standpoint. It provides a strange mix of the story’s original 18 th-century setting via the classically painted walls of the set’s interior, but dresses the characters in 1920s garb. Lyric Opera’s production borrows Mauro Pagano’s sets and Robert Perdziola’s costumes from the Metropolitan Opera’s production earlier this year, which also featured Renée Fleming. These include a fusty prompter, a pair of ballet dancers (choreography by Val Caniparoli), a delightful scene involving the servants, and an Italian duet aria sung by Emily Birsan and Juan José de León. Under Peter McClintock’s direction (based on original direction by John Cox), a host of comic acts in Capriccio provide welcome diversion as well as illustrations of Strauss’s ideas about opera, which double as comments and interpretations. Both Skovhus and von Otter prove that in opera good acting counts as much as beautiful singing. Supporting roles are memorably filled by baritone Bo Skovhus as the countess’s brother and by mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter as the actress Clairon. While seated at the harp, Fleming serenades the audience with that gentle, lyrical mode of singing that she used to such great effect in her justly renowned interpretation of Dvořák’s “Song to the Moon” from Rusalka. It’s only when she’s alone on stage at the very end of the night that her star waxes bright.

Her acting is nearly non-existent and her singing sub-par only about every fourth syllable is audible. Not only does Rose seem to get more words in, words that convey Strauss’s musings on opera, but his powerful voice and rich tone cast warmth and vitality across the whole production.Īs the widowed countess, famed soprano Renée Fleming puts only a smidgeon of her talent into the role, which she plays like a wallflower throughout the majority of the opera. Although tenor William Burden shines as the composer Flamand, both he and the baritone Audun Iversen (as Olivier) are upstaged by bass Peter Rose as the impresario La Roche. They are the poet Olivier and the composer Flamand, commissioned to write words and music for the Countess Madeleine’s birthday. The pretext for Strauss’s comments on opera is provided by the common trope of two suitors competing for the love of a woman. It’s as if Strauss is reflecting on both his heritage and on his own lengthy career. Capriccio, then, sums up and recapitulates the history of opera as seen by one of its last great composers. Yet by setting up an opposition between music and text, Strauss looks forward to its resolution by Richard Wagner in the nineteenth century, for Wagner famously wrote his own libretti as well as his scores. By setting his final opera in the eighteenth century, Strauss can comment on the heyday of bel canto as celebrated by Christoph Willibald Gluck.

It looks forward and backward at the same time. In that sense, it’s an incredibly self-conscious and self-referential work-postmodern even.Įssentially an opera about opera, Strauss’s complex and multivalent final opera both celebrates and subverts the artful combination of music, text, and stage. Instead of a dramatic overture and crowd-pleasing arias, composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949) aims to say something meaningful about opera itself. The brooding romanticism of Capriccio’s opening sextet sets the tone for the introspection that is to follow.

Capriccio lyric opera chicago