A formidable cast for Covent Garden’s Capriccio

Richard Strauss’s operatic swansong Capriccio made an elegant and untaxing conclusion to the Royal Opera’s season. It was done in concert, but there was a fair amount of acting, more from some of the participants than others. Renée Fleming as the Countess, who feels she has to choose between a poet and a composer, wrung her hands, strode around as much as her fabulous silver and black gown allowed, and in the final scene smote her brow in best distraught Joan Crawford manner; the others huffed and flounced and strode off into the wings, and there was, as much as there can be in this strange opera, a sense of people interacting rather than just singers doing their thing.

It’s odd that Strauss, who could, when he put his mind to it, characterise with brevity and precision, here not only chooses to have a large cast, but also leaves most of them in a more or less undifferentiated state, floating on a medium-sized lake of generalised semi-melody. Capriccio is more or less the musical equivalent of a Peacock novel, without the occasional depth that he managed to insinuate. For the alleged discussion of the relative importance of words and music in opera never gets very far and, though the Countess makes a meal of her indecision, it’s clear, one way and another, that Flamand the composer is going to win. The amiable sonnet by Ronsard, that is allegedly written by the poet Olivier, is recited, spoken or sung, at various stages of the piece, but it is the Countess’s singing of it in her glorious final scene that is utterly captivating. The last minutes of the opera, which supposedly dramatise her vacillation, actually show, touchingly, that Strauss knew this was to be his final opera and couldn’t bring himself to end it.