Vancouver.(North America)(Der Rosenkavalier)(Opera Review)

The Der Rosenkavalier (seen Oct. 23) that was called "the largest and most lavish" production in the history of Vancouver Opera clearly was intended to mark a turning point in the company's fortunes. Vancouver had made a headline-grabbing coup when Deborah Voigt was contracted to make her role debut as the Marschallin here on the west coast of Canada. Unfortunately, the headlines returned ten days before Rosenkavalier's first night, when Voigt withdrew from the production, citing her own lack of preparation. Voigt was replaced on short notice by American soprano Carol Wilson, a principal artist at Dusseldorf's Deutsche Oper am Rheim who withdrew early from an engagement as the Marschallin in Aachen in order to fly to Vancouver. (Wilson had previously worked with music director Jonathan Darlington, who conducted Rosenkavalier.)

Veteran director David Gately evidently had decided to work with a broad brush, exaggerating Octavian's passionate impetuosity, Ochs's lecherous loutishness, Faninal's arriviste anxiety. Wilson's pensive Marschallin stood out, dramatically and vocally, as a real, complex character among caricatures. She sang her monologue with great authority and a timbre that occasionally recalled Schwarzkopf's; one missed her wise and calming counsel in the hurly-burly of Act II (why was the presentation of the rose so clumsily staged?); one sighed with relief when she entered, supremely elegant, in Act III to provide a still, articulate center to the action. Though Wilson sometimes had to sing against an orchestra in which the brass sounded out of control (at least they did from where I sat in an ...