Opera: With One Eye Winking

Charming, schmaltzy, waltz-prone Vienna flips for charming, schmaltzy waltz-prone Leonard Bernstein. In 1966, he conducted a rousing Falstaff at the Staatsoper, and last year he presented Mahler’s Second Symphony, in a performance that seemed more authentically Viennese than anything since the days of Bruno Walter. Then, last week, there was Lenny again, preparing to conduct that most Viennese of operas, Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. He professed to be terrified. “Every Vienna taxi driver knows Rosenkavalier as well as he does the national anthem,” said Bernstein, adding with a little Viennese exaggeration, “It’s like walking into the lion’s den.”

When the performance was over, the cheering audience was in a mood to name Bernstein an honorary citizen What he had done essentially was follow Composer Strauss’s own advice to interpret Rosenkavalier “with one eye weeping and one eye winking.” Thus while most Viennese conductors play down the rich orchestral part for the sake of the singers, Bernstein gave it new prominence, urging it on by jumping into the air and dancing on the podium to Strauss’s three-quarter rhythms. And while he captured the elegiac bittersweetness that is at the very heart of the autumnal work, he freed it of the sentimental encrustations that Strauss never intended; as a result it was sharper, livelier, nobler.

One major asset: Bernstein had persuaded Mezzo Christa Ludwig to abandon her accustomed role as the youth Octavian for the lead role of the aging Marschallin, usually sung by a soprano. Ludwig’s vocal prowess, womanly softness and pathos proved her a perfect choice. Said Bernstein: “She was so marvelous in the last scene that I cried watching her.” And that was no Viennese exaggeration.