Opera and other Ramblin's

Saturday I saw Richard Strauss's Opera Cappriccio, a lovely little send-up of the Intellegentsia of the 1940's music scene. The opera is essentially a long debate between a poet, a music composer, and a theater producer on which is the more important element in musical theater: the words, the music or the theatrical production. To add to the drama, both the poet and the composer are friends and partners, and --and this is the good part--friendly rivals for the affections of The Countess Madeleine.

This was Strauss's last opera, and it came at a time when contemporary composers, such as Stravinsky and Ravel, were dismissing Strauss as old-fashioned and irrelevant. Strauss had spent a very long time producing his earlier operas and hadn't composed a work of musical theater in some time. So to make a point in the face of these allegations, he composed three final operas in quick succession: Daphne, Die Liebe der Danae, and Cappriccio--using his "Old-fashioned" compositional techniques and thematic methods. And these operas were all hits.

Cappriccio synopsizes, through the three male lead characters, the arguments and pretentions of the social elite of Strauss's time. The opera builds to a climax when the Count (Madeleine's' brother) challenges the poet and the composer to create new masterworks, and the Countess commissions them to collaborate on an opera. The Count proposes that the opera depict the events of that afternoon. So Cappriccio turns out to be an opera about itself, not unlike Fellini's 7 1/2.

But the evening lacks a climax. Madeleine must provide one by deciding beteen the poet and the composer. In the fianl aria, which like most of Strauss's soprano arias is supernaturally beautiful, The Countess sings of her indecision. Not only is she torn between the two friends, but now she must make a decision, as she says, that won't provide a trivial ending to the opera. Then the butler announces, "Dinner is served;" and the opera ends.

Unsatisfying? Not at all. This cliffhanger ending is perfect. If Madeleine decides for us whether music or words is the more essential element, what's left for us? God, what a great ending. That she made a decision is made clear in the staging. What that decision was is left to us to decide. What a stroke of genius. It's the only way that opera could end.