Intermezzo tells the tale of a husband mistakenly unfaithful who is accused by a bossy wife who has double standards. The tale is that of Richard Strauss and his wife and is set in 1924 when it was first performed.
Richard Strauss (1864-1949) specialised in soprano voices in his operas. In this production of Intermezzo, sung in German, the German soprano Anita Bader is hardly off stage in this her Scottish Opera debut.
She gave us a very convincing performance indeed. We saw less of the husband, Roland Wood - baritone and a familiar face, who was away on a two month long concert tour. The young man who came into the wife’s sights during her husband’s absence, the tenor Nicky Spence, was enjoying his Scottish Opera debut. Household maids, card playing gentlemen (one in particular puffing away on his pipe) and a notary all had lesser parts, but all entirely effective.
The music does not stop and nor should it. But Strauss had written it to be busy, sophisticated in that there was a large orchestra of many different instruments out of our sight, but perhaps lacking any familiar tunes to hum on the way home. The hidden musicians were under the baton of Francesco Corti.
Where the music came into its own was during the scene changes. There were eight scenes before the interval and six afterwards. There must have been some pretty nifty and well organised work behind the curtains each time. And what emerged was very pleasing scenery entirely in keeping with the boisterous goings on of a loving couple beset with the uncertainties of infidelity.
Intermezzo is an operatic rarity as Colin McClatchie, Scottish Opera’s Chairman, told some of us in the interval but that is all the more reason it and similar rarities must have their place. I, for one, am really glad I enjoyed the performance - but probably, I am afraid, won’t remember much about it in six months’ time.
Event
Thursday 7 April 2011, 7.15pm and Saturday 9 April 2011, pre-show talk 6pm, opera 7.15 pm