"The best of the best assembled on stage," wrote Germany's leading
newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung after the premiere of Richard
Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. Indeed, it
would be hard to find a more ideal cast for this late-Romantic Rococo
pastiche anywhere in the world. As the Marschallin, stellar soprano Renée
Fleming uses her velvety tones and autumnal shadings to complement the
youthfully lyrical and dynamic voice of Sophie Koch as her young lover
Octavian.
Diana Damrau's Sophie enhances the trio's sparkle with her ethereal high
notes. Next to Franz Hawlata as a swaggering Baron Ochs and the always
impressive Franz Grundheber as Faninal, the Baden-Baden production
rounds off its male leads with international tenor star Jonas Kaufmann as
the "Italian Singer."
Leading his Münchner Philharmoniker, acclaimed Romantic specialist
Christian Thielemann revels in Strauss's lustrous melancholy and obtains a
rarely heard transparency from the brass and woodwinds. Bolstered by these
solid orchestral underpinnings, Herbert Wernicke's Salzburg Festival
production - which also scored a great success at Paris' Opéra de la
Bastille - has been polished and trimmed here by Alejandro Stadler. It
places the cast of fabulous singers in a sumptuous setting of timeless
elegance dominated by a play of mirrors reflecting the shifting emotions
of the lead trio.
Recorded in high definition by UNITEL CLASSICA in Baden-Baden, this
"deluxe Rosenkavalier" (The Sunday Times) sets a standard that will long
be unsurpassed.