Clemens Krauss

Capriccio is the final opera by Richard Strauss, completed in 1942, and is subtitled "A Conversation Piece for Music." The opera explores the debate between the importance of words and music through the story of Countess Madeleine, who is courted by a poet and a composer, ultimately leaving the question of which art form is superior unresolved.

Richard Strauss' last stage work is an opera about opera as an art form, depicting the creation of a music drama in a wise and witty way. Which came first the words or the music? That is the question Strauss and his librettist Clemens Krauss address through the story of a Countess torn between a composer and a poet.

Renée Fleming is Countess Madeleine, the beautiful, enigmatic woman at the center of Strauss’s sophisticated “Conversation Piece for Music.” She is being courted by two men: Joseph Kaiser sings the composer, Flamand, and Russell Braun is Olivier, the poet. The stellar cast also includes Peter Rose as the theater director La Roche, Sarah Connolly as the actress Clairon, and Morten Frank Larsen as the Countess’s brother. John Cox’s elegant production places the action in the 1920s. Andrew Davis conducts.