Capriccio

The scene is a chateau near Paris in the 1770s, and our heroes are two young men: the composer Flamand and his friend Olivier, a poet. As Flamand’s new string sextet plays quietly in the next room, the two artists wait for a reaction from the Countess Madeleine. Both men are passionate and gifted, but which of them does she prefer? Dancers, servants, a love-poem and a rather forceful theatre director all play their part as the summer afternoon fades into evening, and the Countess must decide, once and for all, which she loves best—music or poetry? Richard Strauss completed his final opera in 1942, in the darkest days of the Second World War, and he didn’t call it an opera. Capriccio, in its composer’s words, is a conversation piece for music; an elegant, humorous allegory of the art of opera created in the midst of barbarism, and evoking the world of Mozart (and Strauss’ own greatest hit Der Rosenkavalier) at the end of a seven-decade career. Somehow, though, it’s more than all that. To music of radiant warmth Strauss’ allegorical characters become living, breathing human beings. Madeleine, in particular, emerges as one of Strauss’ most loveable and perceptive operatic heroines. The result is both playful and poignant: the most perfect and heartfelt of Strauss’ late operas.