For all its fresh, lavish packaging, this Rosenkavalier set is the long-circulated, good-to-excellent 1976 studio recording licensed from Philips by the new Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Vintage Recordings label, no doubt because its primary strength is orchestral. Though Edo de Waart continues giving fine performances of this opera, this outing – heard in the same remastering as its last Philips incarnation – has an individuality that’s perhaps only possible in a longtime relationship between conductor and a non-operatic orchestra without a lot of interpretative baggage from past Rosenkavaliers.

More than anyone, de Waart makes the opera into a triptych: character details in the first act are found in the wind-writing and miniature wind symphonies such as the breakfast music between the Marshallin and Octavian, showing these rarefied Viennese circumstances in counterpoint to a simple-folk sense of play. Act 2 is in the intense, grand harmonic world of Also Sprach Zarathustra; those famous orchestral effects suggesting the gleam of the silver rose are as forward-looking as anything in Elektra. In the final act, de Waart has the farcical buoyance of operetta until the famously cathartic trio – climaxed with supreme effect – when the Marschallin frees Octavian to marry age-appropriate Sophie.

Vocally, Frederica von Stade is at her peak in a particularly tormented, emotionally mature portrayal of Octavian. As Baron Ochs, Jules Bastin’s bass has none of the pitch-obscuring rumble of his German counterparts, so that nothing gets in the way of the flood of character details from his considerable theatrical imagination. Ruth Welting’s Sophie is just fine, vocally and theatrically, if not that distinctive. José Carreras is in fine voice but shouts his way through his aria. Evelyn Lear’s Marschallin, long considered this set’s sticking-point, is better than its reputation: once past the opening scene (whose fine emotional shading is lost in her demure singing), she’s animated with the Baron, and stays that way, even if her vocal freshness varies from scene to scene. Too bad this set wasn’t taken from the live performances prior to the studio sessions: if Lear was in iffy voice, a live performance might have brought out a stronger communicative imperative.