Fuchs devises a clever payoff at the end that is possibly even more touching than Hofmannsthal and Strauss’s closing scene...

The test for director and designer is to find novelty without tiresome exertion. Olivia Fuchs and Niki Turner (with lighting by Ian Jones) have achieved that‚ some reservations aside‚ in a compelling new staging for Welsh National Opera.

In Olivia Fuchs’s mixed new Der Rosenkavalier‚ her first production for Welsh National Opera‚ she draws out one of its bittersweet themes — the passing of time. Sometimes the effect of making this metaphor visible was magical‚ sometimes I felt she was underlining Strauss’s score and Hofmannsthal’s libretto with marker pen.

Olivia Fuchs’ staging of Der Rosenkavalier for WNO was a co-production with Theater Magdeburg‚ who first performed it three years ago. The year of the composer’s death - 1949 - was projected onto a gauze at the outset‚ highlighting Fuchs’ principle device‚ namely the introduction of the Marschallin’s often anguished contemplation of the passing of time. Fuchs’ weighting of this element‚ together with the philosophizing on the nature of love‚ was a welcome corrective to the frivolous and farcical element in the opera.