Montpellier.(International)(Opera Review)

The only fully staged opera presentation at this year's Festival de Radio France et Montpellier was Des Esels Schatten, by Richard Strauss, in a French version (L'Ombre de l'Ane) by festival director Rend Koering. Expectations ran high for an unknown late-Strauss comic opera, but listeners were musically shortchanged by this lightweight offering at the Opera Comedie. Strauss wrote the piece, based on a story by Christoph Martin Wieland, for his much-loved grandson as an end-of-term show for the pupils of his college. His idea to write "dialogue with a few little notes" was never completed, let alone orchestrated, and it was not until 1964 that the work was finally given, to celebrate the centenary of the composer's birth. At the time, Karl Haubner completed and orchestrated the work using a full Straussian orchestra, apparently rendering the work heavy and indigestible. For his French version of the tale, Koering called on Rene Bose to orchestrate and arrange the existing material, and to add some appropriate musical substance to the score. The light chamber scoring was ideal, and it was well conducted here by Juraj Valcuha and finely played by the Orchestre National de Montpellier. Still, the bolstering of the musical material was questionable. Alongside extracts from Ariadne auf Naxos, there were the theme from the film Barman and the theme of a French advertisement for a well-known breakfast drink. There was simply not enough music of quality to sustain ...