Metropolitan Opera Archives

This week's Metropolitan Opera telecast of the sixth and final Richard Strauss-Hugo von Hofmannsthal collaboration, "Arabella," may very likely be many viewers' initial exposure to this autumnal romantic comedy. No first acquaintance with any opera could be more satisfying. The three-hour program, which launches the Met's 20th season on Public Broadcasting (all with underwriting by Texaco), was taped at Lincoln Center in November 1994. It airs Wednesday at 8 p.m on Channel 9. The revival (of a 1983 production) stars the New Zealand soprano, Kiri Te Kanawa, the pre-eminent - perhaps even the definitive - Arabella of our day.

The Met has surrounded her with a generally superior and telegenic cast. The conductor, German Christian Thielemann, impresses on the tube (as he did leading "Elektra" at the San Francisco Opera a few years ago) as a born Straussian. And the intimate intrigues of the plot work so well on the small screen, you'd think director Brian Large had taped the project in the studio. It's just a shame that no local FM station in this reportedly sophisticated city will air the available stereo simulcast track. How about it, KDFC?

Although "Arabella" was written at a time of great loss for Strauss (Hofmannsthal's son had committed suicide and he suffered a fatal stroke on the way to the funeral; the opera wasn't premiered until four years later, in 1933, in Dresden), the unhappiness one encounters in the work is transitory. And Strauss' genius for exalting the soprano voice remains unimpaired and unsurpassed. Yes, "Arabella" is a glorious anachronism. The opera doesn't tell us anything about the collaborators we couldn't glean from "Der Rosenkavalier," produced two decades earlier. Yet, in this tale of an impoverished count and his marriageable daughter in the Vienna of the 1880s, Strauss and Hofmannsthal invested their principal characters with nuances of feeling that make their plights genuinely touching.

The enigmatic Arabella is waiting around for Mr. Right (the literal translation of the German, "Der Richtige"). The suitable but roughshod Count Mandryka materializes from the wilds of Slovenia and falls in love with Arabella's picture. Her father, Count Waldner, who is so poor he has disguised his younger daughter Zdenka as a boy, so he won't have to pay for two weddings, glimpses his visitor's fat wallet and assents to the union. The plot complications wander into the area of poor taste in Act III, but you can bet that Mr. Right and Ms. Eligible end up in each other's arms, and not before one of those radiant finales that would melt a stone.

At 50, Te Kanawa delivers a drop-dead gorgeous Arabella, one whose patrician bearing and gift for floating a long Straussian line remain unrivalled. Swathed in Milena Canonero's lush period duds, she embodies charisma. Te Kanawa, legitimately, can be accused of lacking spontaneity, yet who is incapable of lending the role more allure or glamour today? Handsome German baritone Wolfgang Brendel contributes a thoughtful and sensitive Mandryka. His voice, however, is comfortable only in the upper reaches, and the camera often catches his nervous glances at the pit. Soprano Marie McLaughlin is the pensive Zdenka and tenor David Kuebler is the ardent Matteo.

With a mere thread of voice, veteran New Zealand bass-baritone Donald McIntyre offers a Count Waldner of myriad subtleties. And it seems like sheer largess to cast that erstwhile Isolde, Helga Dernesch, as the Countess Waldner. Soprano NatHalte Dessay vivifies the Fiakermill's stratospheric inanities in Act IL Thielemann animates the conversational passages with affection and elicits rapturous playing from the Met Orchestra. Otto Schenck's production (here entrusted to Stephen Pickover) wears very well and Gunther Schneider-Siemssen's interiors suggest the proper faded elegance. No innovations here and "Arabella," a melodious orphan in a lustrous family of music theater works, doesn't need them.

The Met will offer two more full-length taped productions this season - "Madame Butterfly" (with Catherine Malfitano and Richard Leech) on Dee. 27 and "Otello" (with Plácido Domingo and Renee Fleming) on Jan. 27. A 25th anniversary tribute to artistic director James Levine will be telecast in April. To be taped later this season for future telecasts - the new productions of Verdi's "La Forza del destino" and Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte," which marks the company debut of mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli.

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