Richard Strauss

Capriccio

CONDUCTOR Conversation piece for music

Andrew Davis
in one act
PRODUCTION Libretto by Clemens Krauss and the composer
John Cox

SET DESIGNER Saturday, April 23, 2011, 1:00–3:25 pm

Mauro Pagano

COSTUME DESIGNER & Last time this season

INTERIOR DÉCOR
Robert Perdziola

LIGHTING DESIGNER
Duane Schuler
The production of Capriccio was made possible
CHOREOGRAPHER by generous gifts from an anonymous donor
Val Caniparoli and Bill Rollnick and Nancy Ellison Rollnick.
STAGE DIRECTOR
Peter McClintock

GENERAL MANAGER
Peter Gelb

MUSIC DIRECTOR
James Levine
 2010–11 Season

The 13th Metropolitan Opera performance of

Richard Strauss’s

Capriccio
This performance
is being broadcast Conductor
live over The Andrew Davis
Toll Brothers–
Metropolitan in order of vocal appearance
Opera
International Flamand, a composer Servants
Radio Network, Joseph Kaiser Ronald Naldi
sponsored by Paul Corona
Toll Brothers, Olivier, a poet Steven Goldstein
America’s luxury Russell Braun Christopher Schaldenbrand*
®
homebuilder , Grant Youngblood
with generous La Roche, Scott Scully
long-term a theater director Brian Frutiger
support from Peter Rose Kyle Pfortmiller
The Annenberg
Foundation, the The Countess, Major-Domo
Vincent A. Stabile a young widow Michael Devlin
Endowment for Renée Fleming
Monsieur Taupe, a prompter
Broadcast Media,
The Count, her brother Bernard Fitch
and contributions
Morten Frank Larsen
from listeners
solo dancers
worldwide. Clairon, an actress Laura Feig
Sarah Connolly Eric Otto
This performance is
also being broadcast Italian Singers musicians
live on Metropolitan Olga Makarina David Chan, violin
Opera Radio on Barry Banks Rafael Figueroa, cello
SIRIUS channel 78 Dennis Giauque, harpsichord
and XM channel 79.

Saturday, April 23, 2011, 1:00–3:25 pm

 This afternoon’s performance is being transmitted
live in high definition to movie theaters worldwide.

The Met: Live in HD series is made possible by a generous grant

from its founding sponsor, the Neubauer Family Foundation.

Bloomberg is the global corporate sponsor of The Met: Live in HD.

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Renée Fleming as Musical Preparation Dennis Giauque, Vlad Iftinca,
the Countess in a Steven Gathman, Jonathan Kelly, and Patrick Furrer
scene from Strauss’s
Assistant Stage Director Gregory Anthony Fortner
Capriccio
Stage Band Conductor Jeffrey Goldberg
German Coach Irene Spiegelman
Prompter Steven Gathman
New interior décor constructed and painted in
Metropolitan Opera Shops
Costumes executed by Metropolitan Opera Costume
Department
Wigs by Metropolitan Opera Wig Department

Performed by arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.,

publisher and copyright owner.

This performance is made possible in part by public

funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Before the performance begins, please switch off

cell phones and other electronic devices.
Yamaha is the official piano
of the Metropolitan Opera.

Latecomers will not be

admitted during the
performance.

* Graduate of the
Lindemann Young Artist
Met Titles
Development Program To activate, press the red button to the right of the screen in front of
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press the red button once again. If you have questions please ask an
Visit metopera.org usher at intermission.
 Synopsis

Performed without intermission.

A chateau near Paris, 1920s

It is the birthday of the young, widowed Countess Madeleine. The composer

Flamand and the poet Olivier are listening to the rehearsal of Flamand’s string
sextet, written for the occasion, while the theater director La Roche is dozing.
Flamand and Olivier realize that they are both in love with the countess. What
will impress her more—Flamand’s music or Olivier’s poetry? La Roche wakes and
joins the argument. Neither poetry nor music, he says, is the greatest of the arts.
His own, the art of theatrical production, encompasses and overshadows them
both. He believes in entertainment—splendid decor, top notes, and beautiful
women, such as the famous actress Clairon, who recently had an affair with
Olivier. La Roche is to direct the poet’s new play, with Clairon and the countess’s
brother, a talented amateur actor, in the leading roles. As the three men leave
to prepare for the rehearsal, the count and countess enter, teasing each other
about their artistic opinions.

La Roche and his protégés return and Clairon arrives for the rehearsal. She and
the count read a scene from Olivier’s play that ends with the count reciting a
passionate sonnet. La Roche leads them both off to rehearsal, leaving Flamand
and Olivier alone with the countess. Olivier declares that the sonnet was written
for her and recites it again, which inspires Flamand to rush off to set it to music.
Olivier seizes the opportunity to declare his love to the countess, who still
hesitates between poetry and music. Flamand triumphantly returns to sing the
sonnet he has just composed. The countess reflects on the synthesis of words
and music, while Olivier, though moved, feels that his work has been ruined.
The two men argue about the true authorship of the sonnet, and the countess
decides the issue: it is now hers.

When La Roche takes Olivier away to rehearsal, Flamand in turn declares his
love to the countess. He asks her to decide: music or poetry, him or Olivier?
She promises that he shall have the answer the next morning at eleven o’clock.
Flamand leaves in great excitement.

The rehearsal over, the participants return. Flamand and Olivier resume their
argument of words versus music and the others join in. The count ridicules opera
in general. La Roche introduces a pair of Italian singers who perform a duet.
Then he announces his plans for an epic, mythological spectacle, to be given for
the count’s birthday. When the others make fun of his grandiose ideas, La Roche
eloquently attacks them, expressing his theatrical creed: instead of the feeble

34
attempts of modern writers, he wants drama to show human beings in all their
complexity, as creatures of flesh and blood. He challenges Flamand and Olivier
to create new works that will speak for their time. His listeners are moved and a
new plan emerges: Flamand and Olivier are to write an opera together. Possible
subjects are discussed, until the count suggests that the events of this very day
should be the subject, with the people present as its characters—it is the opera
we have been watching. The ending is yet to be decided by the countess.

The company breaks up and the guests leave for Paris, accompanied by the count.
Servants enter to tidy up the room, commenting on the events of the afternoon
from their point of view—isn’t everybody just playing theater? Monsieur Taupe,
the prompter, who had fallen asleep during the rehearsal, unexpectedly appears.
He explains to the major-domo that, in fact, it is he who is the most important
person in the theater because without him the show couldn’t go on. The major-
domo, after listening patiently, arranges for his transport home.

It is evening. The countess enters and learns from the major-domo that Olivier
will call the next morning at eleven to hear from her the ending of the opera.
She tells herself that since the reading of the sonnet, the composer and the poet
seem inseparable—now they even expect to meet her the following morning at
the same time. She begins singing the sonnet to herself, trying to make up her
mind: which of the two men does she love? Looking at herself in the mirror, she
realizes she can’t make a choice. When the major-domo announces that dinner
is served, she smiles at her reflection and slowly walks out of the room.

Visit metopera.org 35
 In Focus

Richard Strauss
Capriccio

Premiere: Munich, National Theater, 1942

Richard Strauss’s final opera is a sophisticated “conversation piece for music”
(the work’s actual subtitle) centering on the age-old question of whether words
or music take precedence in theater and in the arts in general. A poet and a
musician submit their respective creations to a young countess and ask her to
decide. Implicit in her verdict is another issue: which one of them will she take
as her lover? Surrounding this triangle are other characters with various degrees
of investment in the same question: the countess’s brother, an amateur actor
who prefers erotic action to romantic theory; a celebrated actress; and a theater
director with a strong sense of the practical (a combination of a Straussian
alter ego and an affectionate caricature of the great director Max Reinhardt).
The conversation moves to opera as the consummation of all the arts, and it is
decided that the poet and the musician should write one together—with the
day’s events as its subject. The ending is unknown: the countess must choose
it. This light framework provides many opportunities for witty interactions and
virtuoso musical touches. The idea of “words versus music” had served as the
basis for a short opera by Antonio Salieri, performed in Vienna in 1786, and a
whiff of nostalgia for a lost (if imaginary) era of refinement permeates Capriccio.
There is little action in any conventional sense, but there is great insight and
plenty of beauty. Furthermore, it is impossible to experience this opera without
taking into account the circumstances of its composition and premiere in wartime
Germany. Considered in this context, its seeming “triviality” assumes a poignant
significance (the word “trivial” appears in the countess’s last line in the libretto,
posed as a question). The opera’s steadfast insistence on the importance of
aesthetics and courtly love pleads for the continued celebration of beauty itself
in a violent, ugly world. While undeniably more subtle than Strauss’s earlier
operas, that very subtlety becomes Capriccio’s most outstanding and powerful
feature.

The Setting
Strauss imagined his work set at a chateau near Paris, with its own private
theater. (Indeed, the air of luxury is an integral aspect of the story.) The opera
was originally set in the second half of the 18th century, a time when debates
about the merits of various genres of music theater triggered elaborate wars of
words in and around the French capital. However, the issues at hand—the role
of music in opera, the need for plausible drama, the function of dance, design,

36
and stagecraft—are not specific to that era. The present production places the
opera within the glamorous ambience of the interwar period of the 1920s.

The Creators
Richard Strauss (1864–1949) composed an impressive body of orchestral works
and songs before turning to opera. After two early failures, Salome (1905)
caused a theatrical sensation, and the balance of his long career was largely
dedicated to the stage, with most of his works through the 1920s written in
collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The idea for Capriccio originated
with Stefan Zweig, an Austrian writer of novels, plays, and non-fiction who had
written the libretto to Strauss’s Die schweigsame Frau (1935). Zweig’s Jewish
background made further collaboration impossible, and the composer turned
to his friend and colleague Clemens Krauss (1893–1954), an Austrian impresario
and conductor who also led Capriccio’s premiere performance.

The Music
In keeping with the general tone of Capriccio, the score is refined and more
complex than it appears on first hearing. Musical forms from the 18th century
are discernible, especially in the brief dance interludes. The large orchestra is
used in a very light-handed manner, rarely employing its full force and instead
creating the effect of a chamber ensemble. The opera’s overture, for example,
is a sextet for strings—and, in keeping with the narrative of the story, forms part
of the action. The vocal writing mostly keeps a conversational flow (with a few
notable exceptions), ranging from actual spoken lines to “Sprechstimme” (a sort
of musicalized speech) to several complex ensembles. Vocal and instrumental
writing interact playfully throughout the opera. The bass’s extended monologue
celebrating the art of theater represents one of the few opportunities for solo
singing. The apex of the score is the final scene, a combination of a rapturous
orchestral passage (the “Moonlight Music”) followed by the countess’s
monologue, widely considered a supreme example of Strauss’s many superb
showcases for the soprano voice.

Capriccio at the Met

This production of Capriccio premiered in 1998, marking the opera’s Met
premiere. Andrew Davis conducted Kiri Te Kanawa as the countess, with
Wolfgang Brendel, Kathryn Harries, Jan-Hendrik Rootering, David Kuebler, and
Simon Keenlyside in the cast. This season’s run, with Renée Fleming as the
countess, is the production’s first revival.

Visit metopera.org 37
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Program Note

L
ong famous—indeed notorious—as a composer who exploited opera’s
full potential for the grandiose and the ferocious, the 78-year-old Richard
Strauss said farewell to the public stage in 1942 with Capriccio, a serene
score of almost anti-operatic intimacy. Labeled variously by the composer as a
“conversation piece” or “theatrical fugue,” Capriccio is perhaps not so much the
last of Strauss’s 15 music-dramas as his loving epilogue to a completed operatic
career. It is a dramatized aesthetic debate, warmed by music at once sharp-
tongued and humane. Each of its allegorical characters represents one of the
many individual elements that combine into the crazy-quilt art form of opera: a
composer, a poet, a producer–director, an actress, a would-be actor, an Italian
soprano–tenor team, a ballerina, even a prompter—and, above all, a muse,
portrayed by Strauss’s leading soprano.
Realizing that he must alert listeners to the work’s abstract design, Strauss
discarded two provisional titles connected with the dramatic action (Words
or Notes and A Sonnet for the Countess) and chose the generic musical term
Capriccio (akin to the abstract “sonata” or “fugue”). In an instrumental capriccio,
the composer leavens a strict formal design with quirkiness and fantasy,
delighting in the forbidden; Strauss here departs from operatic convention with
equal relish.
The composer first planned Capriccio while scoring his opera Die
Schweigsame Frau (1934–35), based on Stefan Zweig’s adaptation of a Ben
Jonson comedy. Working with euphoric ease and rapidity, Strauss could scarcely
believe his luck in finding Zweig. After the death of his longtime librettist
Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1929, the composer had despaired of procuring a
successor even remotely as capable; now in Zweig he had a partner whose style
and dramaturgy excited him as Hofmannsthal’s had—and who was much easier
to work with on a personal level. Before he had finished Die Schweigsame Frau,
Strauss was already bombarding Zweig with requests for dramatic ideas, and
the pair rapidly drew up an agenda of four operatic projects.
Strauss considered combining two of these into a hybrid piece reminiscent
of his earlier Ariadne auf Naxos. As in Ariadne, a comic backstage prologue
(the germ that eventually grew into Capriccio) would precede a highly stylized
neo-Classical opera based on timeless Greek myth. The prologue would be
developed from an 18th-century buffo libretto Zweig had unearthed: Giovanni
Casti’s Prima la Musica, Poi le Parole (“First the Music, Then the Words”). Casti’s
text—once set by Salieri for performance in a famous Viennese court double-
bill with Mozart’s Impresario—was now hopelessly dated; but Zweig planned to
explore the perennial operatic question at its core: “Which is more important,
the music or the drama?” The evening would close with Strauss’s “answer” to
Casti’s conundrum: a one-act opera on the mythological subject of Daphne.
What tickled Strauss about this plan was that it echoed musical history: what

39
 Program Note CONTINUED

is generally considered to be the first opera ever written—Jacopo Peri’s Dafne

(1597)—had grown out of similar words-versus-music debates.
As Die Schweigsame Frau’s June 1935 premiere approached, however,
Strauss was disabused of his naïve belief that the Nazis would countenance his
partnership with the Jewish Zweig. The composer successfully fought to have
Zweig’s name listed on the playbills (as a result, the piece would disappear from
theaters), but the writer had already found a substitute librettist for his other
Strauss projects: Joseph Gregor, a theater historian. With Zweig’s assistance,
Gregor worked out a Casti scenario, sending it to Strauss 11 days before Die
Schweigsame Frau premiered. In consternation, Strauss urged Zweig to stick by
him; ultimately, he had to accept the Aryan Gregor as a fact of life. Putting the
Casti project on the back burner (it would remain there for almost four years),
the composer turned Gregor loose on the rest of his Zweig agenda.
Alas, where Zweig (the creative artist) danced, Gregor (the academic)
lumbered. An exasperated Strauss rejected draft after draft, often finding
it difficult to keep his criticisms within the bounds of civility. Given draconian
editing, Gregor’s efforts could pass muster in the mythic or historical complexities
of Daphne, Friedenstag, and Die Liebe der Danae. The Casti adaptation, at
last resumed in March 1939, was another matter. Strauss knew that it needed
sparkling conversation and delicate wit; Gregor kept getting bogged down
in amorphous poetic imagery and pompous sermonizing. That October, the
composer told Gregor to drop the project altogether.
Fortunately, Strauss had already been discussing the opera with the conductor
Clemens Krauss, whose literary and dramatic instincts he had good reason to
admire. In 1933, Krauss had come to the rescue of Strauss’s one abysmal failure
with Hofmannsthal, Die Ägyptische Helena, which had languished unperformed
for several years. Stepping sure-footedly through the poet’s mytho-symbolic
quagmire, Krauss clarified the action and won the disgraced score a heartening
measure of acclaim. Strauss now asked the conductor to develop the Wort oder
Ton project with him, offering Krauss libretto credit.
The scenario Krauss inherited already contained many elements of the final
Capriccio. Clearly, the words-versus-music question demanded to be embodied
in a love triangle. The beautiful, aesthetically inclined heroine (Countess
Madeleine) is courted by a composer (Flamand) and a poet (Olivier) and unable to
decide between them—the choice becoming even more difficult when Flamand
sets Olivier’s love-sonnet to music. The milieu was Enlightenment France, with
the birth pangs of Gluck’s “modern” opera sending tremors through Capriccio’s
central debate and allowing witty musical references to Gluck, Rameau, and
Couperin. Krauss wrote the libretto in pithy prose. For the crucial sonnet, he
asked his conducting protégé Hans Swarowsky (an adept linguist) to find and
translate a good period example. Discovering that French love sonnets circa

40
1777 did not exist (André Chénier came a bit later), Swarowsky went back two
centuries to Pierre Ronsard. Strauss was delighted by Swarowsky’s German
rendering and finished setting the sonnet on November 23, 1939. The first music
in Capriccio to be composed, it is particularly important because it is repeated
in key scenes.
As late as June 1940, Strauss still intended to close the evening with his
already completed Daphne (1937), to be presented as an opera by Flamand and
Olivier (the pairing would have lasted over four hours). Fortunately, he found a
far more ingenious solution—toward the end, the audience learns that what
they have been watching is the Flamand–Olivier opera, Capriccio! With the
book still incomplete but well along, Strauss began composing the introduction
and first scene in July 1940. Receiving the last of the libretto in mid-January 1941,
he finished the entire short score on February 24 and the full orchestration on
August 3.
Inspired by the composer’s love of paradox and intellectual argument, the
music of Capriccio represents a rejuvenated Strauss, notably fresher and more
imaginative than in his spotty scores for Friedenstag (1936) and Die Liebe der
Danae (1940). From the outset, Strauss changes all the rules, beginning with
an “overture” wholly un-operatic in sound, scored for string sextet. We soon
discover that this sonatina-form movement with its seraphic opening and stormy
central portion has been composed by Flamand in homage to Madeleine. For
the sonnet, Strauss crafts a lovely melody, drawing most discretely on late
Verdi—Otello (“Ave Maria”) at the opening, Falstaff (the Nannetta–Fenton
duet) at the first melodic climax. Complex ensembles crackle with invention: the
central fugue (labeled “Discussion about Words or Notes”) and the “Laughing”
and “Argument” Octets, in which the director La Roche’s stage-spectacles are
held up to ridicule. La Roche’s ensuing defense is a highlight, its length justified
by its musical majesty. Here, Strauss presents a thoroughly convincing warts-
and-all picture of a vain but undeniably great man.
But of course he saves his greatest eloquence for Madeleine’s final
monologue. To introduce the scene, he resurrects a noble horn melody that
he had squandered 20 years before on a libelous song-cycle written specifically
to break a publishing contract. Even in old age, Strauss was still inspired to
lyric rapture by a heroine’s quest for self-knowledge, as Madeleine sings the
sonnet accompanying herself on the harp and searches her own image in the
mirror, faced with a question that has no answer. So long as opera survives—and
human brains perceive and integrate the way they do—the choice “words or
music” is literally meaningless. Their coexistence in song, fraught with epiphany
and vexation, remains an ever-wondrous mystery. —Benjamin Folkman

Visit metopera.org 41
 Capriccio in a Twenties Setting

T
he central issue in Capriccio, happily, can never be resolved. The superiority
of music over poetry, or vice versa, must always be a matter of personal
preference. The countess, not wishing to sacrifice one by choosing the other,
proposes opera as a way to possess both. But this compromise, far from being a
solution, sharpens a mere topic of conversation into a vexed confrontation—for
in opera the conflict of priorities between words and music is enacted with every
performance. Those of us who work in opera are inevitably caught up in the battle.
Capriccio is a conversation piece, concerned with ideas. Given that the issues
embodied in these ideas are as alive today as they ever were, and that by performing
the opera at all we are contributing to the argument, I wanted to find a way of doing
it that would stress how contemporary it is. In a piece that is of necessity rather
static, the 18th-century convention of paniered skirts and powdered wigs could
easily lend to the proceedings an air of the museum. So often with Capriccio, one
gets the impression of a group of silk and satin dilettantes idling their way affectedly
through a vacuous afternoon, whereas the essence of the situation is a number of
professional artists discussing their work with their patrons.
However, unlike the ideas, the social circumstances embodied in Capriccio are
not of the present. Where now do we find an elite wealthy and cultivated enough to
patronize artists as extravagantly as the countess and her brother do? The task was
thus to find a time that would be true to the dramatic content of the opera.
Paris in the decade after World War I had all that we needed. Patronesses like the
Princesse de Polignac commissioned works from Stravinsky, Cocteau, the composers
of Les Six, and others for private consumption. All of them were concerned with
problems of form, many with finding new ways of combining words and music for the
theater. Diaghilev and Reinhardt bestrode the theatrical scene.
Most of all, the relaxation of social behavior found in the post-war period, with
its ingenious emphasis on comfort that is not yet at the expense of elegance, seems
to look back to the 18th century and forward to our own. It releases to the performer
a rich vocabulary of gesture, posture, and moment-to-moment activity that is more
accessible to both audience and actors, being much closer to their own, and that,
therefore, can only assist in pointing the relevance of the conversation to us as we
watch and listen.
Those who find problematic the references within our text to 18th-century
composers and writers should reflect that every age has its reformers and traditionalists.
Names change but issues remain. Strauss, by claiming in his preface to Capriccio that
he himself was the direct heir of Gluck’s reforms, cleared the way for an exposition in
words and music of his own compositional concerns. (As if to leave us in no doubt at
all of this musical self-portrait, he even quotes frequently from his own work.) In short,
everything Strauss represents was as true during his working life as it was in Gluck’s—
most notably in the wholly 20th-century figure of the producer La Roche.
La Roche is anxious to people the stage with “creatures of flesh and blood,”
“people like ourselves with whom we can identify.” This interpretation of Capriccio is
an attempt to please him. —John Cox

John Cox directed the Met’s production of Capriccio in 1998.

42 Visit metopera.org
The Cast

Andrew Davis
conductor (hertfordshire, england)

this season Capriccio at the Met, Peter Grimes at Covent Garden, Rusalka and Thaïs at the
Glyndebourne Festival, Ariadne auf Naxos with the Canadian Opera Company, and The
Mikado, Lohengrin, and La Fanciulla del West at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
met appearances Salome (debut, 1981), Ariadne auf Naxos, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Don
Giovanni, Hansel and Gretel, The Merry Widow, Der Rosenkavalier, Rusalka, and Die
Walküre with the company on tour in Japan.
career highlights He has been music director and principal conductor of Lyric Opera of
Chicago since 2000, is conductor laureate of the Toronto Symphony and BBC Symphony
Orchestra, and was music director of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. He has conducted
all of the major orchestras of the world, from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to the
Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw, as well as at opera houses and festivals
throughout the world, including La Scala and the Bayreuth Festival.

Robert Perdziola
costume designer & interior décor (pennsylvania )

this season Capriccio at the Met.

met productions Costume designer for Il Pirata (debut, 2002).
career highlights Sets and costumes for Arabella for Opera Australia; Così fan tutte for
Opera Monte Carlo, Garsington Opera, and San Francisco Opera; Ariadne auf Naxos for
Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera; La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein for
Opera Boston; and productions at the Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and
Glimmerglass Opera. He has also designed sets and costumes for Pillar of Fire and Le
Spectre de la Rose for American Ballet Theatre. Current productions include costumes
for An Ideal Husband at Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company and sets and
costumes for The Merry Wives of Windsor for Ontario’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

43
 The Cast CONTINUED

Sarah Connolly
mezzo - soprano (middlesborough, england)

this season Clairon in Capriccio at the Met and Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito at the
Aix-en-Provence Festival.
met appearances The Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos and Annio in La Clemenza di Tito
(debut, 2005).
career highlights Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Covent Garden and La Scala, the
title role of Giulio Cesare and Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde at the Glyndebourne Festival,
Orfeo in Orfeo ed Euridice and Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia at Munich’s Bavarian
State Opera, Nerone in L’Incoronazione di Poppea at Barcelona’s Liceu and Florence’s
Maggio Musicale, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier at the Scottish Opera and for English
National Opera, the title role of Maria Stuarda and Romeo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi for
Opera North, and Romeo and the title role of Ariodante with New York City Opera. Future
engagements include Fricka in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre at Covent Garden, Orfeo
in Montpellier, Octavian at English National Opera, and return engagements at the Liceu,
Paris Opera, and Glyndebourne Festival.

Renée Fleming
soprano (indiana , pennsylvania )

this season The title role of Armida and the Countess in Capriccio at the Met, Desdemona
in Otello at the Paris Opera, and concert engagements with the BBC Symphony Orchestra,
Pittsburgh Symphony, National Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Munich Philharmonic,
Danish National Symphony, Aarhus Symphony, Royal Stockholm Symphony, Staatskapelle
Dresden, and Berliner Philharmoniker, among others.
met appearances The title roles of Thaïs, Rusalka, Manon, Rodelinda, Arabella, and
Susannah, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Violetta in La Traviata, Desdemona,
Tatiana in Eugene Onegin, the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro (debut, 1991), Donna Anna
in Don Giovanni, Rosina in the world premiere of The Ghosts of Versailles, Imogene in
Il Pirata, Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, and Marguerite in Faust.
career highlights She has appeared in all the world’s leading opera houses, is the recipient
of three Grammy Awards, and was awarded the titles Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur
and Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. She was
a 1988 winner of the Met’s National Council Auditions.

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 Russell Braun
baritone (frankfurt, germany)

this season Chou En-lai in Nixon in China and Olivier in Capriccio at the Met, Lescaut in
Manon on tour in Japan with London’s Royal Opera (Covent Garden), and Mercutio in
Roméo et Juliette at La Scala.
met appearances Silvio in Pagliacci, Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Dr. Falke in Die
Fledermaus (debut, 1995), and Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette.
career highlights Recent performances include the Traveller in Death in Venice at Vienna’s
Theater an der Wien, Valentin in Faust at Covent Garden, Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande
at La Scala, Oreste in Iphigénie en Tauride with the Paris Opera, the title role of Eugene
Onegin with the San Francisco Opera, and the title role of Billy Budd, Prince Andrei in
War and Peace, and Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor with the Canadian Opera Company.

Joseph Kaiser
tenor (montreal , canada )

this season Flamand in Capriccio at the Met, Lenski in Eugene Onegin for his debut at
°
the Paris Opera, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte at Covent Garden, Števa in Jenufa at Munich’s
Bavarian State Opera, and Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni at the Munich Festival.
met appearances Narraboth in Salome, Roméo in Roméo et Juliette (debut, 2007), and
Tamino.
career highlights Recent debuts include the title role of Faust at Lyric Opera of Chicago,
the title role of Messanger’s Fortunio at Paris’s Opéra Comique, Don Ottavio at the
Salzburg Festival, and Admète in Gluck’s Alceste at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. He also
recently sang Tamino with Los Angeles Opera, Lenski at the Salzburg Festival, Narraboth
at Covent Garden, and Jonas in Saariaho’s Adriana Mater at Santa Fe Opera. He starred
as Tamino in Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of The Magic Flute and appeared on
Broadway as Schaunard in the Baz Luhrmann production of La Bohème.

45
 The Cast CONTINUED

Morten Frank Larsen

baritone (hammerum, denmark )

this season The Count in Capriccio for his Met debut.

career highlights Mandryka in Arabella with the Vienna State Opera and in Zurich, Berlin,
Graz, and Frankfurt; Jochanaan in Salome with the Vienna State Opera and in Munich,
Berlin, Toulouse, and Palermo; Don Giovanni, Count di Luna in Il Trovatore, and Enrico
in Lucia di Lammermoor in Copenhagen; Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande at Denmark’s
Aarhus Festival; and Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande in Tokyo. He has also sung Gunther
in Götterdämmerung, the Count in Capriccio, and Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus at the
Vienna State Opera and Nathan in Nicholas Maw’s Sophie’s Choice and Gilles de Rais in
the posthumous world premiere of Walter Braunfels’s Jeanne d’Arc at the Deutsche Oper
Berlin. A member of the Vienna Volksoper since 2000, his many roles with that company
range from Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro to Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress,
Germont in La Traviata, and the title role in Dallapiccola’s Il Prigioniero.

Peter Rose
bass (canterbury, england)

this season La Roche in Capriccio at the Met, Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier with
Munich’s Bavarian State Opera, Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Lyric Opera
of Chicago, Gurnemanz in Parsifal in Hamburg, and Claggart in Billy Budd with the Vienna
State Opera.
met appearances Don Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Bottom (debut, 1996), Ramfis in Aida,
Baron Ochs, and Daland in Der Fliegende Höllander.
career highlights Among his recent performances are Falstaff with Seattle Opera, Osmin
in Die Entführung aus dem Serail with the San Francisco Opera and Bavarian State Opera,
and Baron Ochs at the Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, and in Barcelona. He has
also sung King Marke in Tristan und Isolde and Gurnemanz at the Vienna State Opera,
Kecal in The Bartered Bride at Covent Garden and in Chicago, Mustafa in L’Italiana in
Algeri in Amsterdam and Dresden, Dosifei in Khovanshchina in Hamburg, Leporello in
Don Giovanni in Cologne, Rocco in Fidelio in Vienna, and Boris Godunov with English
National Opera. This October he will sing Baron Ochs at La Scala.

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