A Rosenkavalier without a heart ain’t much of a Rosenkavalier

In all its minute details, Der Rosenkavalier is rooted in a painstakingly stylised version of Rococo Vienna that, paradoxically, is further fixed in a web of cannily juxtaposed anachronisms. Upset their balance and you risk upsetting the balance of the whole piece. That’s no bad thing, of course, but Richard Jones’s bold new production for Glyndebourne — opening the festival’s 80th season — shows exactly the advantages and disadvantages of doing that. Out go the dusty stucco-work and wobbly walls of elderly traditional productions; in come Paul Steinberg’s sharp sets and Jones’s trademark garish wallpaper, which Mimi Jordan Sherin’s brilliant lighting floods with further shifting colours. White wigs remain, but on footmen and valets one might imagine waiting on Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts (costumes by Nicky Gillibrand). Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Rosenkavalier is precisely located, geographically and chronologically; Jones’s is a mishmash, sharply defined only in its angles, colours and execution.

The stagecraft is virtuosic, and the whole thing is packed with detail, striking and stylish, not least in an opening tableau where we see the Marschallin (Kate Royal) standing in a shower — nude suit or birthday suit, I couldn’t quite tell — of golden confetti, as Octavian (Tara Erraught) looks pervily on. With hints of further affairs — an awkward adolescent Mohammed (Daniel Francis-Swaby) is clearly infatuated with her — this Marschallin seems closer to Powder Her Face’s dirty duchess, her relationship with Octavian distanced, voyeuristic and lacking in intimacy. A mute Freud-alike sitting in on her Monologue only emphasises the fact she has issues.

Sophie is explicitly shown as a prime bargaining chip for her father (the excellent Michael Kraus) to complete his social climb, paraded in Act 2 in a sort of auction. Lars Woldt’s Baron Ochs, favouring forceful bluster over nuance, is drawn as a broad caricature, robbed of the dangerous charm and residual nobility that the libretto gives him.