Bavarian State Ballet
All his life, Richard Strauss, the world-champion composer of operatic blockbusters like Salome, dreamed of creating a light-hearted piece in operetta style. Fifty-six years after his death, his dream came true. But instead of the operetta he envisioned, the work emerged as a ballet.
On December 10, 2005, on the stage of the Munich National Theater in Germany, the Bavarian State Ballet danced the commissioned première of Die Silberne Rose (The Silver Rose), a ballet in three acts by Australian choreographer Graeme Murphy after Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier. Alas, the ballet did not appear as originally planned, with music from the opera specially arranged by Strauss to accompany the eponymous silent movie of 1926; Strauss’ heirs were strictly against the “balletic assassination” of the maestro’s work. Instead, Murphy choreographed to a musical potpourri concocted by Murphy´s Australian house composer, Carl Vine. Played by the Bavarian State Orchestra under the routine leadership of Myron Romanul, the score sounded like Rachmaninov with a coating of Liberace.
Although well received by the audience, critical reactions were lukewarm—small wonder, for Munich considers Strauss, who lived in nearby Garmisch, its legitimate property, time-honored by legendary Rosenkavalier productions with conductors and singers of worldwide renown.
Murphy, with his international reputation for creating full-length story ballets, obviously modeled his production on Ronald Hynd´s The Merry Widow of 1975, changing Der Rosenkavalier’s original plot a bit. Thus the character of Die Marschallin becomes an aging actress, who enjoys a stormy love affair with the dashing Octavian, who might be an apprentice in the local theater academy. When they are almost caught in flagrante delicto by Ochs, a pompous impresario, Octavian escapes by dressing as the Marschallin´s chambermaid, whom Ochs promptly pursues.
Later, the Marschallin recommends Octavian to serve as the messenger who will present the Silver Rose to Sophie von Faninal, marking Sophie’s betrothal to Ochs. Octavian, dressed once again as a smart young cavalier, falls instantly in love with Sophie and brawls with Ochs, who emerges as the duped loser. The Marschallin gives her final blessing to Sophie and Octavian, resigning herself to her autumnal years.
What might have materialized happily as an elegant, danced operetta with melancholy overtones, became, in Murphy´s well-crafted version, a mix between Holiday on Ice and a glitzy version of the fictional kingdom of Ruritania, lavishly decorated and costumed in Viennese Art Nouveau style. Alas, ballerina Sherelle Charge is no Margot Fonteyn (or Zizi Jeanmaire), but made a technically solid if rather plain Marschallin, while Cyril Pierre was a nondescript Ochs, and Lucia Lacarra seemed much too sophisticated as Sophie. It was left to Lukas Slavicky´s technically stupendous, if theatrically reticent Octavian to raise the temperature of the performance, otherwise competently executed by the dancers of the Bavarian State Ballet, with Peter Jolesch as Sophie´s father, and with Roberta Fernandez and Olivier Vercoutière in some minor roles.
Horst Koegler, the dean of German dance criticism and longtime dance editor of the Stuttgarter Zeitung, now keeps a dance journal on the website www.tanznetz.de.
