Go Nouveau this weekend
FAN FAVOURITE DER ROSENKAVALIER OPENS IN MAJOR CENTRES TOMORROW Tragicomic romance opens at Nouveau, SterKinekor cinemas.
The final opera in the current Met: Live in HD season is Strauss’ tragicomic romance, Der Rosenkavalier. The production, the Met’s first new staging of the piece since 1969, releases exclusively at Nouveau and select Ster-Kinekor cinemas tomorrow.
The dream cast of Renée Fleming, singing in her final performances of one of her signature roles as the Marschallin, and Elena Garanea in her Met role debut as the Marschallin’s young lover, Octavian, star in Strauss’s grandest opera.
This production also features Günther Groissböck as Baron Ochs, the Marschallin’s oafish cousin; Erin Morley as Sophie, the innocent young woman who comes between the Marschallin and Octavian; Marcus Brück in his Met debut as Sophie’s father, Faninal; and Matthew Polenzani as the Italian Singer.
In this new staging of Der Rosenkavalier, Robert Carsen, the director behind the Met’s recent Falstaff, places the action at the end of the Habsburg Empire, underscoring the opera’s subtext of class and conflict against a rich backdrop of gilt and red damask.
Carsen’s staging features set design by Paul Steinberg, costume design by Brigitte Reiffenstuel, lighting design by Carsen and Peter Van Praet and choreography by Philippe Giraudeau. Sebastian Weigle conducts the sparklingly perfect score.
The opera premiered at the Court Opera, Dresden, in 1911. Set in an idealised Vienna of the past, Strauss’ most popular opera concerns a wise woman of the world who is involved with a much younger lover but ultimately is forced to accept the laws of time, giving him up to a pretty young heiress.
Hofmannsthal’s fascinating libretto deftly combines comedy, dreamy nostalgic fantasy, genuine human drama and light, but striking touches of philosophy
and social Bookings are open and festival tickets for Encounters are R55. Der Rosenkavalier releases exclusively at Nouveau cinemas in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town and at select Ster-Kinekor cinemas tomrrow for limited screenings.
Shows are tomorrow at 5pm, Sunday at 2.30pm, June 13 at 11.30am, June 20 at 6pm and June 21 at 11.30am commentary.
Strauss’ magnificent score, likewise, works on several levels, combining the refinement of Mozart with the epic grandeur of Wagner.
The running time of the opera is 4 hours 12 minutes, including two intervals.
If your taste for films outside of the popular realm is not yet quenched, the 19th Encounters South African International Documentary Festival offers an extraordinary, wide-ranging selection of nonfiction experiences according to Encounters Festival director Darryl Els.
This popular annual festival at Ster-Kinekor’s Nouveau cinemas at Rosebank Mall in Johannesburg and the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town ends on Sunday. – Citzen reporter
For more information about the Encounters Documentary Festival and the
screening at Nouveau, visit