OPERA REVIEW : A Thoughtful ‘Capriccio’ Caps Strauss Festival in S.F.

All is not lost. The world can still improve. Mistakes can be fixed. Life can be beautiful.

This happy, unexpected news came to us at the War Memorial Opera House on Saturday when the San Francisco Opera revived its problematic production of Richard Strauss’ “Capriccio.”

Did I say revived ? Make that revised. Make it rethought .

Make it salvaged .

When the fragile “conversation piece for music” was last seen here, back in 1990, it was subjected to a patently clumsy, stubbornly trendy, ultimately disastrous variety of modernist indignities.

John Cox, the meddling director, swapped the courtly elegance of 1777 for the quirky sleaze of 1927. In the process, he reduced the pensive, aristocratic heroine to a cool flapper, and he turned the references to contemporary 18th-Century reform into preposterous anachronisms. He obviously trusted neither the aged composer nor his enlightened librettist, the conductor Clemens Krauss.

Cox insisted on adding a lot of not-so-funny business to the intentionally static drama. Like too many of his with-it colleagues these days, he couldn’t bear to keep the curtain down for a moment. Not even for the prelude.

Without demonstrable cause, he had the exquisite string sextet played not in the pit but on the set. He also deprived the heroine of her most crucial prop, forcing her to end the opera making faces at the audiences through a looking glass that, apparently, only the pure in heart could see.

Compounding the distortions, couturier Gianni Versace designed odd costumes. They turned out to be fashion-model chic at one perverse extreme, comic-cartoon grotesque at the other.

Lotfi Mansouri, general director of the San Francisco Opera, is not a man to leave bad enough alone. Cox is gone this year--his name is nowhere to be found in the program credits--and the grateful clock has been turned back a century and a half.

Stephen Lawless, the new director, traces the gentle lines of the philosophical plot with much grace and with very little gimmickry. The late Mauro Pagano’s misty salon set, designed for the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, now frames characters wearing lavish (occasionally too lavish) period costumes by Thierry Bosquet. And, wonder of comforting wonders, an actual mirror adorns a side-wall.

The musical picture has brightened too. Donald Runnicles, who has inherited the baton in this case from Stephen Barlow, conducts Strauss’ subtle valedictory with obvious affection, sustaining finesse without fussiness and propulsion without haste. He supports the voices sensitively--an achievement especially important in this treatise on the rivalry between words and music--and he knows how to sustain tension on the way to the climaxes.

We pine for the illuminating presence of conductors of his quality in the Music Center pit. For reasons unknown, Los Angeles’ opera company seems to prefer the services of routinier accompanists.

The cast, half new, is still dominated by the radiant Kiri Te Kanawa as the Countess Madeleine. Her colleagues, for the most part, are not great singers blessed with great voices. But they are thoughtful singing-actors. They are more intent on projecting character and text than on producing pearly tones.

Liberated from the terrible twenties, Te Kanawa assumes royal grandeur along with her extravagant hoop. Proud but never prim, gracious but never precious, she sustains the essential erotic allure without making a point of it. Most important, she inflects the arching lines with shimmering silvery tone, delicately shaded, and she respects the difference between sentiment and sentimentality. A lovely performance.

Her two suitors are well matched. David Kuebler makes an ardent charmer of the composer Flamand, even when his lyric tenor sounds a bit dry. Simon Keenlyside is crisply quizzical as the poet Olivier, even when his lyric baritone sounds a bit timid.

Tatiana Troyanos, though ever authoritative, looks and sounds somewhat blowzy as the actress Clairon. Hakan Hagegard again plays the Count as a nice overgrown puppy dog, and does so with temporarily persuasive wit. Victor Braun returns as a theatrically crafty, vocally muted La Roche.

The cameo roles are in appreciative hands. Michel Senechal sighs and squints sweetly as the pathetic prompter, significantly named Monsieur Taupe. As the intrusive Italian singers, Craig Estep and Maria Fortuna master and muster enough bel-canto bravura to make one overlook the caricature of their opera-seria costumes. Dale Travis leads the amusing servant octet with wry assurance as the crusty major-domo.

The extrovert dance interludes, choreographed by Eleanor Fazan, breach the period and bog down in fussy byplay. They also enlist the services of a danseur prescribed neither by Strauss nor Krauss. Still, Shannon Lilly as the flirtatious ballerina and David Justin as her expendable cavalier make the most of their dubious opportunities.

The one-act narrative is being performed, as is now usual, in two acts. The awkward bisection, it should be noted, was first imposed in 1957--15 years after the premiere and eight years after the composer’s death. Who knows, the next revival might reveal the cumulative impact of “Capriccio” in the structure intended by its creators.

In San Francisco, hope now springs internal.