Richard Strauss - Capriccio Opera DVD Runnicles, Te Kanawa, Hagegard, Troyanos

This listing is for Richard Strauss Capriccio Runnicles, Te Kanawa, Hagegard, Troyanos, San Francisco Opera DVD.  

Actors: Kiri Te Kanawa, Håkan Hagegård, Tatiana Troyanos, Victor Braun, David Kuebler

Director: Peter Maniura

Producers: Jane Seymour, Judy Flannery

Writers: Clemens Krauss, Richard Strauss

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

MPAA rating: NR (Not Rated)

Media Format: Multiple Formats, Classical, Color, Full Screen, NTSC

Run time: 2 hours and 24 minutes

Release date: June 10, 2003

Subtitles: English

Language: German (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)

Studio: Kultur Video

Number of discs: 1

Richard Strauss's last opera includes some of the composer's most elegant and sumptuous music. Features Soprano Kiri Te Kanawa. The last and most subtle of Richard Strauss's operas gets a finely nuanced interpretation in this San Francisco Opera production. A generally excellent cast is highlighted not only by the radiant presence of Kiri Te Kanawa but by the deceptively robust performance of Tatiana Troyanos in her last operatic appearance before her untimely death from cancer. The composer described Capriccio as a "conversation piece for music in one act," and he put a lot of effort into it, not only the music but the words, on which he collaborated with conductor Clemens Krauss. His verbal input was particularly appropriate in this work, because the real subject (symbolized by a conventional love triangle) is the competition (and alliance) between words and music in opera, a subject naturally close to the composer-librettist's heart. The conversation runs through the whole opera in various forms. It begins immediately after the curtain goes up, with a quarrel between the poet Olivier (Simon Keenlyside) and the composer Flamand (David Kuebler) over the respective merits of their arts. They are rivals for the hand of the widowed Countess Madeleine (Te Kanawa); she is to choose between them (i.e., between poetry and music) but she is still undecided as the final curtain descends. The intervening two hours are rich in artistic shop talk and backstage situations that will enchant sophisticated opera-lovers, as well as the love interest for the rest of us. David Runnicles conducts with a sure sense of Straussian style; and Mauro Pagano's 18th-century set creates the right atmosphere. Keenlyside and Kuebler are eloquent and believable, Te Kanawa sweet, regal and ambiguous. Håkan Hagegård and Victor Braun give particularly vivid performances in supporting roles. 

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