Truly in the spirit?

I could not disagree more with Mark Swed on the production aspects of Los Angeles Opera’s “Der Rosenkavalier” [“Strange but True,” May 31]. The headline said production was “utterly faithful to its spirit,” but nowhere in the article was there a statement of what that spirit was. I submit that instead of illuminating the spirit of “Rosenkavalier,” Maximilian Schell and Gottfried Helnwein distanced us from it. They dehumanized all the secondary players with masks, paint and grotesque costumes. Instead of creating a sense of timelessness and universality, they used so many different period costumes (commedia dell’arte, pantomime, modern policeman, etc.) that they created chaos.

Charles Bragg

Pacific Palisades