Richard Strauss: Capriccio Joint production by the Palace of Arts and the National Philharmonic

To the great delight of audiences a few years ago, Zoltán Kocsis and the National Philharmonic Orchestra which he has directed for the past 15 years entered new territory in producing a number of rarely performed operatic works. A separate strand within this is an ongoing series of productions of works by Richard Strauss, which has so far seen the performance of his opera Daphne. Two further operas await audiences in the 2012/13 season: Die schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman) and the composer’s ...last opera, Capriccio. The interesting thing about this latter work, which was premièred in Munich during the Second World War in 1942, is that Strauss himself classified it under a fictitious genre, providing it with the subtitle of Konversationsstück für Musik (A conversation piece for music). As with so many of Strauss’s operas, the action takes place in the 18th century, visualizing the style of the period as naturally seen through the composer’s lens. The fundamental concept of the work is to ask the question: Which is more important in an opera, the music or the libretto? (The same question was asked by Antonio Salieri in a one-act opera he wrote in 1786.) The poet Olivier and the composer Flamand, who have each created a work for the countess’s birthday, debate this key question of opera before sitting down to create a joint work. The countess, however, can no more choose between the two suitors competing for her affections than she can separate the libretto from the music. “If you favour one, you lose the other,” she says at the end of the opera, before the major-domo announces: Dinner is served!