Close on the heels of Jonathan Miller’s abysmal updating of
Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress at the Met comes the scarcely less
misguided Capriccio, set by John Cox in the 1920s. Richard
Strauss’s fifteenth and last opera, from 1942 when he was
seventy-eight, is a
summation of the old composer’s insights into the making and
producing of operas. With a libretto by himself and the conductor
Clemens Krauss, the work calls itself “a conversation piece with
music.” Indeed, its characters debate in a 1775 salon which comes
first in opera, the words or the music, as well as related matters.
In her house near Paris, Countess Madeleine entertains the composer
Flamand and the poet Olivier who vie for her love; her brother, the
Count, a clever philistine with little use for opera except as it
supplies singers and dancers for his bed; and the impresario La Roche
(an affectionate caricature of Max Reinhardt), the practical man of
the theater who sees himself as opera’s prime mover, being the only
one who knows what the public wants and how to supply it. Also on
hand are the diva Clairon (there is to be a rehearsal in the next
room), a husband-and-wife Italian operatic duo, and, briefly, a
ballerina whom, like the singers, La Roche brings on as party
entertainment.
Later we hear from the prompter, who in turn presumes to be the
linchpin of the operatic event, and the Countess’s servants, who
supply the backstairs (or backstage) view: who