A Fine ‘Rosenkavalier’ for Today, if Not the Ages

RICHARD STRAUSS: “Der Rosenkavalier.” Kiri Te Kanawa, Anne Sophie von Otter, Barbara Hendricks, Kurt Rydl, Franz Grundheber, Richard Leech; Bernhard Haitink leading forces of the Dresden Staatsoper. EMI CDS 7542592 (three CDs).

This is a fine “Rosenkavalier” by current standards, not quite so fine by yesterday’s standards--those defined by Schwarzkopf and Crespin, Jurinac and Ludwig, Guden and Popp, Edelmann and Bohme, Karajan and Erich Kleiber. Leading the newly liberated Dresden Staatskapelle, Haitink projects the lush Straussian sentiment with ample warmth and brio, if without maximum lilt and elegance.

Authentic Viennese accents, both figuratively and literally, are in short supply in this studio-oriented performance.

Te Kanawa is cool and pretty as a somewhat cautious Marschallin. Forget the heartbreak. Von Otter’s pliant, impetuous Octavian is not ideally matched by Hendricks’ sometimes radiant, sometimes off-pitch Sophie. Rydl relishes Ochs’ subterranean phrases, if not his seedy-aristocratic wit. Grundheber makes bel-canto meat of Faninal, and Leech does the same, more legitimately, with the aria of the Italian Tenor.