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I saw Curtis Opera Theater's version of Richard Strauss's opera Capriccio on Wednesday. Capriccio is a strange opera- Strauss's last, and in some senses an attempt to sum up his life's work. It was also apparently staged for the first time in 1942, in Germany, and one wonders how that weighed on the strangeness of the work. It is not in any sense an overtly political work- rather it is a retreat into formal, abstract philosophy. It is a caprice in the face of war. That, I suspect, is not a capricious act.

The scenario is straightforward on its face- The countess is pursued by two lovers, a poet and a composer. She is torn between them, unable to choose. Each woos her using their art as an expression of their love, so she becomes drawn into the question of whether words or music offer a deeper expression of one's feelings, whether words or music is more powerful, because it allows her to abstract herself away from the emotional question that stymies her. In the end, she remains unable to choose.

But the opera is anything but straightforward. I have never seen a work of art that so relentlessly remixed itself, over and over again, as it was happening. A sonnet composed by the poet-lover is performed four times by four different characters over the course of the opera, twice spoken, twice sung to a melody composed by the composer-lover. Each time it evokes new feelings and thoughts. The opera's emotional climax is a scene in which the characters discuss creating an opera based on their conversations earlier that evening... as they list off criteria that their opera must meet, one realizes that Strauss has been meeting all of these formal criteria, no matter how ridiculous they are.

The criteria are ridiculous because in addition to being this weird philosophical meditation on the nature of art and artists, Capriccio is also a very, very funny comedy staging a series of parodies of operatic history. Basically every composer from the Baroque to Verismo (except for Gluck... I think Strauss worships Gluck, making me think I probably ought to investigate Gluck) gets leveled with pitch perfect parody in the score, and the musical humor is at the level of Mozart's "A Musical Joke", where it's almost hard to recognize that the piece is a joke because it's so fundamentally elevated by the skill of the composer. The scene at the end where the servants, in Greek chorus-style, comment on the previous story while complaining that more operas should tell the stories of servants is side-splittingly funny and yet also dramatically thought-provoking. The very serious Italian opera singers using bel canto style to complain that their impresario hasn't paid them is a sublime joke.

The most sublime joke of all is that opera's central question: words or music? If it were merely a philosophical question, should we prefer words or music, the answer would be obviously both. If it were merely a plot question, should the countess sleep with the poet or the musician, the answer would be obviously neither. It's only by combining both that Strauss manages to create a work that stretches to an exhaustive but compelling two and a half hour single act without presenting what the countess terms 'a trivial solution'. Because it is both human drama and moral philosophy, it stands ineluctably beyond our grasp. ('or what's a heaven for?')

Curtis Opera Theater is a student company, but their shows generally are marked by the best kind of professionalism, and this was no exception. Stunning, precise, emotional singing characterized all of the leads, and the set was simple but elegant and effective.