Strauss evening of unprecedented height: Arabella as vorspiel of Scenes from a marriage

To perhaps the most beautiful music written by Strauss, Arabella descends the stairs and hands Mandryka a glass of water. Their engagement is thus sealed. Behind the loving couple, however, an inky black space opens up into which both disappear.

No, in this staging by Christof Loy is Arabella anything but the light-hearted Viennese comedy Strauss asked of his librettist Hugo von Hoffmansthal. No Rosenkavelier light, rather the vorspiel of Scenes from a marriage.

Whereas in many staging of Arabella emphasis is placed on pomp and circumstance, here the setting is limited to an ingeniously shifting back wall showing the rooms in the Viennese hotel where the Waldner family is staying. A gambling-addicted father, a mother who resorts to a card reader and a sister who has to go through life as a boy for lack of money - this city is too expensive to support two daughters. Keeping up appearances in the nineteenth century. 

The father desperately tries to marry off his eldest daughter Arabella to an old service companion, who, however, turns out to be deceased, but his sole heir saw her picture and immediately fell in love with her. Sound Wagnerian?

True. At Der fliegende Hollander the father also tries to marry off his daughter to bring in money. There, it was the daughter who fell in love with a picture, but the similarities are clear. We are not dealing with real love, but dreamed. In one of the most beautiful duets of the entire opera, Arabella and her sister sing about the abstract 'Richtige' for a reason.

Where in Der fliegende Hollander there is only one other lover, there are three graves and Matteo in love with Arabella in coquettish Vienna, but she especially does not see the latter. Much to the chagrin of her sister Zdenka, as she does harbour warm feelings for Matteo. But then again, she walks around in trousers and is his best friend. However, when Arabella chooses the newcomer, Zdenka gives Matteo the key to Arabella's room but shares the bed with him herself. Anyway, all the ingredients are there for a comedy full of dressing up and personality changes. And then there's a happy ending too.

Loy steers far from this. Not only because of the bare sets, but above all because of clever directing of characters - the third act can therefore even do it almost without a set - and an eye for detail. What Loy does very cleverly, for example, is to have one dress per act pass from sister to sister, making the most improbable - Matteo wearing it during the Liebesstunde does not notice the difference between Arabella and Zdenka - becomes completely understandable.

Of course, Loy does not escape the farcical, but he also gives the role of the yodelling coach mascot Fiakermilli something painful by performing her as a third-rate Merilyn Monroe. And he is also lucky, because although this production was first seen abroad five years ago, it takes on extra comic overtones in Amsterdam. Indeed, the role of the mother is sung (superbly) by Charlotte Margiono, to be admired many times in the same city in the greatest soprano roles. Just when she is acting whether she actually wants to turn on for a big aria, her husband hums bitterly: 'Jetzt keine Arien'.

They are partly inside jokes, but they fit a Strauss evening of an unprecedented high standard. The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra was also on top form, helped by Marc Albrecht, who definitively shook off the sentimentality of Arabella precisely by using the composer's metronome indications as a guide. Too bad the orchestra was a bit too loud, but that could also be due to the theatre's always tricky acoustics.

For the soloists, nothing but praise. Jacquelyn Wagner and Agneta Eichenholz enchant as the Waldner sisters. Only Will Hartmann (Matteo) was disappointing. Perhaps his recent role debut as Siegfried in Wagner's Ring to blame for that, because here he occasionally sounded as if he wanted to reply not Arabella but the whole Valhalla.

The National Opera: Richard Strauss, Arabella. National Opera & Ballet, still to be seen until 2 May 2014.