Laughing matters

‘Comedy for music by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Music by Richard Strauss.’ That’s what the creators of Der Rosenkavalier wrote on the score, but don’t expect to see it reprinted in any programme books. Their careful wording doesn’t fit modern assumptions about Der Rosenkavalier, and not merely because it gives the librettist first place. There’s that troublesome word ‘comedy’, too. Advertising blurbs tell us (I know, I’ve written a couple) that Rosenkavalier is a bittersweet meditation on love, transience and loss. Yet its creators meant it to be funny. ‘Don’t forget that the audience should also laugh!’ wrote Strauss to Hofmannsthal. ‘Laugh, not just smile or grin!’

Richard Jones’s Glyndebourne production never forgets that. Nor do the cast, who embody the show’s opera buffa spirit as joyously — and as touchingly — as if they were in The Marriage of Figaro. There’s no reason why the Marschallin has to be a campy ageing diva.