A jubilant beginning

The worst of the summer heat is fading. The dog-days of summer recede. And the fall season in this great city begins to get underway.

Last night, at 6.30pm, the New York City Opera opened its doors with a new production of Richard Strauss's last opera, Capriccio. Although far from being Strauss's most celebrated work, Capriccio is a little jewel, almost flawless as an exquisite miniature. And in the final scene, when the Countess has a long meditation on love, life and art, Strauss gives the soprano some of the most sublime, bittersweet and soaring music ever written for that voice.

While the City Opera may be the poor relation to its next-door neighbour, the Metropolitan Opera, there was no sense of witnessing second-best at last night's performances. The cast of US and British performers was superb. It's true that Capriccio makes no extraordinary demands on most of its singers, but the City Opera's ensemble is made up of quality, mostly young talent, who look the part and can actually act - something the Met all too often places precious little store on. The orchestra was for the most part spot on - sometimes a few climaxes were rather hurried for my taste, and some of the slower parts taken a little too slow, but nothing to mar the overall enjoyment.

The big role, that of the Countess, was taken by American soprano Pamela Armstrong (no, not Baywatch, another one). While her lower register had a tendency to harshness, her higher notes, and these are the ones that really count with Strauss, were glorious - delicate, soft and floating above the orchestra without being overwhelmed by it.

Capriccio's plot, such as it is, seems a curious choice for an opera. A group of friends meet at a Countess's home in the suburbs of Paris to discuss words, poetry, music and stagecraft while preparing a show for the Countess's birthday. That's pretty much it really. No-one dies and no-one gets married. Apart from the Countess's closing scene, the only other big solo is a 15-minute baritone monologue on the importance of the role of the theatre director. This is no Tosca. But in the right hands Capriccio can and does weave a tear-jerking magic that is all of its own.

The production is directed by the UK's Stephen Lawless - and he hardly puts a foot wrong. Wisely moving the action from the 18th century setting of the original to the 1940s, when the opera was written, Lawless proves himself both a subtle handler of delicate scenes and to be in possession of an excellent comic eye when needed. Occasionally, he lets his love of the ridiculous gain too much of an upper-hand - as in a rather overlong passage in which he sends up a group of ballet dancers. His lighting director, Pat Collins, is clearly a fan of Vermeer, especially in the lovely opening tableau of the poet and composer writing at desks with light falling on them from above.

There are, however, two serious flaws to this production. While Armstrong is ravishing musically in the final scene, Lawless has decided to put her on a tiny stage-within-the-stage, completely over-exaggerating the admitted artificiality of the moment. It also limits the emotional depth of the scene, which never really seems to break out from its limited physical setting.

Much more serious, however, was the theatre's decision to show the opera with a twenty-minute interval half way through. Capriccio is a one-act opera of no overtaxing length - and is written as one piece of music. To introduce a break required the action to be stopped more or less in mid-phrase. The effect was dreadful - it betrayed a total misunderstanding of the way music works and the only reason for it can be concern over bar takings, a very sad state of affairs. It wasn't like interrupting, say, Beethoven's Fifth between the second and third movement. It was like having an interval in the middle of a movement. This is a musical crime of a particularly heinous nature. Were it not for the excellence of the rest of the production, this sin would be unforgivable.

On Monday, the Metropolitan Opera throws wide its doors on a new season. I have no tickets yet for the opening night gala. But I'm hoping to take the box office by storm...