Richard Strauss - Arabella / Haitink, Putnam, Brocheler, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
This elegantly playful opera (sometimes close to operetta in style) gets a polished,  light-hearted, but also serious production at England's famous Glyndebourne  Festival. Ashley Putnam gives a glowing performance in the title role and she has a strong supporting cast. John Cox's stage direction and Julia Trevelyan Oman's  design create a convincing atmosphere of 19th-century Vienna (not without a dark  side to provoke dramatic interest) and Bernard  Haitink's conducting of the London Philharmonic is splendidly idiomatic, in the dramatic music as well as the waltz and  folk dance melodies that brighten the score.Arabellais the last libretto written for Richard Strauss by Hugo von Hofmannsthal before his untimely death, and it has the high literary value found  in all his work, although he did not live to revise Acts II and III. The story focuses  on a Viennese family, Count Waldemar, his wife Adelaide and two daughters,  Arabella and Zdenka. They are living in genteel poverty and hoping that Arabella,  who has  several suitors, will marry  well and recoup their fortune. They are so  poor that Zdenka has been raised as a boy because the family cannot afford to   bring out two daughters in Viennese society.A properly rich suitor,  Mandryka, shows up and it is love at first sight, until Zdenka  confuses the situation. She is in love with one of Arabella's suitors, Matteo, sends  him love letters under Arabella's name and seduces him in a darkened bedroom  under the pretense that she is Arabella. Mandrkya learns of the seduction but not  of Zdenka's deception, and breaks off his engagement to Arabella. There is, of  course, a happy ending.Putnam is sweet and troubled in stage presence, silvery in tone and totally  charming. John Brocheler is an ardent, impetuous Mandryka and Gianna  Rolandi is convincing in the rather difficult role of Zdenka. Gwendolyn  Bradley makes an impressive appearance as Fiakermilli, the belle of the  coachmen's ball in Act II, one of the opera's favorite features with Viennese  audiences.--Joe McLellan