Hugo Shirley

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

Plus: a needlessly hyperactive Cosi fan tutte from Phelim McDermott at the ENO

Octavian (Tara Erraught), Baron Ochs (Lars Woldt) and the Marschallin (Kate Royal) [Getty Images/Shutterstock/iStock/Alamy] 
issue 24 May 2014

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.

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