Review - Arabella - Opera Australia

Stairway to Heaven
Just when I thought I was immune to Herr Doktor Strauss and his box of musical tricks! Arabella isn't really top drawer Strauss either but the old wizard makes it a persuasive if sentimental night of schmaltz, providing you follow the instructions. Directed by John Cox (reproduced in Melbourne by Cathy Dadd) the instructions are followed in myriad detail but in a staging that is cunningly economical to look at. Maintaining the essential Vienna 1860s period it works from the centre, with beautifully recreated gowns and works outward, shedding excessive details as it spreads into the wings. Interiors are suggested with props and free-standing doorways only. It isn't meant to look cheap or appear a cost cutting measure, rather it cuts out the superfluous scenic excesses, the same way Opera Australia's time share production of Der Rosenkavalier also does. Rather than slavishly recreating Vienna in it's hey day Robert Perdziola's set is dominated by huge architect's scale model of Vienna set on a right angle at the back of the acting area. It is one of those operatic re-thinks that can give an audience a new way of looking at this difficult to stage art form without going too far. It simply looks like the heroine of the story, the loved by everyone Arabella, has the whole of the city at her feet. It looks a little too like one of Albert Speer's models of Germania made for Hitler (but let's not go down that avenue of Strauss's life). The other big coup is the famous staircase - "the staircase of fate," according to the famous producer Rodolf Hartmann* - reconciliation scene that ends the opera, why it is so important for Arabella to descend a staircase with her glass of water will always escape me, but the practical job that suddenly whirls so easily into the final tableau where Arabella looks like she is descending from Heaven won't be easily forgotten. The economy was only really apparent in the second act where the Cabbie's ball seems to have attracted no more than dozen people. Mandryka got off lucky, when he announces he will buy champagne for all the guests he would probably have a few bottles left from a single crate! Even with a thin crowd it still looked like a great, 'Fledermausy', ball scene, the weird but not untypical Straussian coloratura creation Fiakermilli (Lorina Gore), with her even weirder aria looked a little like Prince Orlofsky in that 'other' Strauss opera come to think of it.

The musical side of a Strauss opera is always a priority, the man could simply turn on a flood of music that bypasses all reason and goes straight to your heart. Orchestra Victoria played superbly, the restrained first and second acts with their hints of goodies to come were especially well done. The Straussian self-parody, a kind of musical menu of Straussian situations, was great. In the opening scene with the fortune teller Strauss echos Clytemnestra's dream from Elektra, or when Arabella first appears that enigmatic, often slithery 'love me' string writing that appeared in the presentation of the rose and kept appearing right up to the very closing bars of his last opera Capriccio says straight off that Arabella is a charmer, all of it lovingly brought out to charm your defences away. Another point, when Mandryka reveals to Waldner that he is in love with Arabella the orchestra quietly announces the first of the themes that will flood the final act, counterpointing horns and strings, a foretaste of the lusciousness to come. In the second act, when Mandryka begins their great love scene, telling Arabella about his late first wife, the great recordings with Bavarian and Vienna orchestras can seem to suspend time. Orchestra Victoria came close to creating that mysterious sound world and every other felicity of the score - including the great orchestral prelude to act three, depicting Zdenka and Matteo making love - one of Strauss's many depictions of 'nookie' in purely musical terms - was beautifully shaped and coloured.

Cheryl Barker [now Dr. Barker**] comes close to an ideal Arabella in phrasing the great music. She only falls short in one or two places; the floating high note in her 'Der Richtige' passage in the act two duet where she sings about the sunlight on the river is one. None the less Barker has vocal poise, as Dame Edna would say, she can shape a phrase beautifully and a killer legato. I attended the second of the three performances where Peter Coleman-Wright had cancelled, the part of Mandryka sung instead by Warwick Fyfe. A lighter voice than Coleman-Wright but in no way short change. Perhaps the outraged and drunken scenes could have been a little more forthright and he could even been a little more vulgar but he was thoroughly familiar with the part and the production, cut a clean sway through the music and was very moving in the scene in act two recalling his first wife and again touching in his act three shame. Bringing out the the man's sincerity and venerability in the important scenes in acts one and two are more important than the few minutes of abandon. Like other Strauss operas there are many borderline roles that verge being integral to the success of the whole. Under play or under sing them and it falls apart. The tenor role Matteo is sung by a newcomer to the company, Richard Roberts, who has a beautiful and powerful, Straussian male, voice and a touch of 'Hunkentenor' (how could Zdenka have kept the light out in her room with that specimen visiting!). In the fearsomely high and exposed passage when he confronts Arabella in act three, begging her to look at him one last time and not deny what (he thinks) passed between them in the hotel room, his voice rung out with a secure and broad tone. The next tenor in the food chain Count Elemer is one of those comprimario roles that needs a front rank voice. Kanen Breen, slipping into 19th century mode for an extended stay, coped very well with the part that is written for extreme highs and lows and is no simple comedy part. The list goes on; Arabella's parents Adelaide (Milijana Nikolic), with a particularly fruity mezzo when required, and Waldner (Conal Coad) were perfect. Emma Matthews in the pants part of Zdenka sounds like her well known mezzo mode voice, particularly welcome in Strauss. In short everything fell in place to become the most persuasive argument for an unfamiliar work you could have wished for.
Arabella (1933)
Music - Richard Strauss
Libretto- Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Arabella - Cheryl Barker
Zdenka, her sister - Emma Matthews
Adelaide, their mother - Milijana Nikolic
Count Waldner, their father - Conal Coad
Mandryka - Peter Coleman-Wright (Warwick Fyfe 6 May)
Matteo, an army officer - Richard Roberts
Count Elemer, one of Arabella's suitors - Kanen Breen
Count Lamoral, one of Arabella's suitors - Barry Ryan
Count Dominik, one of Arabella's suitors - David Thelander
Fiakermilli - Lorina Gore
Welko, a Hussar, Mandryka's manservant - Stephen Smith
A Famous Fortune-Teller - Jacqueline Dark
A Waiter - Warren Fisher
Opera Australia Chorus
Orchestra Victoria
Conductor - Lionel Friend
Director - John Cox, rehearsed by Cathy Dadd
Set & Costume Designer - Robert Perdziola
Lighting Designer - Donn Byrnes
State Theatre. 3, 6 & 9 May 2008
195 minutes (2 intervals)

*Rodolf Hartmann Richard Strauss: The Staging of His Operas and Ballets (1980), English edition, Phaidon Press 1982
**At the annual graduation ceremony on May 15 2008 the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) conferred Honorary Doctorates of Visual and Performing Arts on both Cheryl Barker and Peter Coleman-Wright.

pictured: Richard Strauss (centre) with the creators of (left) Arabella (Viorica Ursuleac)

and Mandryka (Alfred Jerger)