L.A. Opera’s ‘Rosenkavalier’ Takes a Different Direction

Financial pressures have caused the L.A. Opera to cancel announced plans to present a new Gotz Friedrich/Berlin staging of “Der Rosenkavalier” in May and June of this year and, instead, to co-produce the same Richard Strauss opera with three other companies.

The Friedrich production--with designs by Robert Israel and Jan Skalicki--will be replaced by a version that originates next month at the English National Opera in London, staged by British director Jonathan Miller.

As a reported consequence of the change, soprano Karan Armstrong (Friedrich’s wife) has withdrawn from the Music Center performances and will be replaced in the role of the Marschallin by Ashley Putnam, who sang it with San Diego Opera in January, 1992.

With sets and costumes by (respectively) Peter J. Davison and Sue Blane, Miller’s ENO “Rosenkavalier” moves the action of the opera from the 18th Century to about 1910, the year of its composition. In London, it will be sung in English.

David Ritch will restage Miller’s production locally--using the original German libretto, and with a different cast than the ENO--for six performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion from May 29 to June 12. Also sharing costs and eventual use of the production: New York City Opera and Houston Grand Opera.

L.A. Opera General Manager Peter Hemmings explained Thursday that he reconsidered his plans to co-produce Friedrich’s “Rosenkavalier” staging with the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, when he saw the production and found it “in our view, not appropriate for Los Angeles.”

“It was extremely modernized,” he said, “and as I said to him (Friedrich), one needed a knowledge of the social and artistic history of Europe to appreciate it.”

Hemmings said that he then discussed with the renowned German opera director the idea of creating “a new production more in line with what we needed, and I looked for a partner to enable us to afford it.”

“In the end, the estimates we got for doing this (proposed) production, even with a partner, defeated us in a year when all arts organizations in the country are facing financial difficulties. I thought that it was inappropriate and, indeed, impossible for us to spend this sort of money.”

Hemmings declined to be specific about the amount involved, saying only that “it was substantially more than we had in our budget for a co-production with Berlin. . . . In the past, when money was more available, you could sometimes risk something like this, but nowadays you can’t.” Contracts with Friedrich and Armstrong have been “mutually settled,” he said, again not providing details.

In other L.A. Opera news, Paula Rasmussen replaces Stephanie Vlahos as Suzuki in the upcoming (Feb. 23 to March 8) Pavilion performances of “Madama Butterfly.”