The last scene from Strauss's "Salome"

Continuing my series of program notes:

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Salomé: ‘Ah, du wolltest mich nicht...’ 

At the time of its first performance, Salomé was considered the ultimate extension of Wagner’s methods. Wagner had originally sought a reform of opera in the marriage of music and words; he wrote his own librettos. For Salomé Strauss used an actual play, Oscar Wilde’s French-language drama, Salomé, of 1891. 

But Strauss faced the same problem as Wagner with music’s primacy. ‘[Salomé],’ he concluded, ‘is the symphony in the medium of drama...’ But nothing in Wagner, to borrow Jennifer Hambrick’s words, was ‘any match for Salomé’s psychologically charged libretto and surprisingly dissonant score.’

Strauss had seen a production of Wilde’s play in Berlin in 1902, and a poet Anton Lindner suggested that it would make a good libretto. Strauss tried out the play’s opening lines (in German translation): ‘Wie schön ist die Prinzessin Salome heute Nacht’ (How beautiful is the Princess Salome this night) and realized that he could create a libretto essentially by trimming the text.

This was his third opera. Strauss had been stretching form in his symphonic poems, even to the extent of trying to render a philosophy in music (Thus Spake Zarathustra); he now took Wagner’s chromaticism and stretched it further in the quest to render the sickness of Salomé’s love. Even Wagnerians had difficulty swallowing the subject matter. Siegfried Wagner said his father ‘was ‘already turning in his grave’.

The plot is Wilde’s variation of a Bible story: Salomé has longed to kiss the lips of the prophet Jokanaan (John the Baptist); he has repulsed her. King Herod who ogles Salomé despite her being his step-daughter, says he’ll give her anything she wants if only she’ll reveal herself to him in a dance of the seven veils. She does so, and demands the head of Jokanaan as reward. The final scene, in which Salome finally kisses Jokanaan’s lips, is a tour-de-force. It unfolds in several long paragraphs, each building to a larger and larger climax as the dramatic soprano brings the opera to its repellent, if emotional conclusion.

Having feared that the executioner would resist killing the prophet, Salome exults as Jokanaan’s head is presented to her on its silver platter. There is a mighty roar in the orchestra and a horrific revision of the motif which preceded the opera’s opening reflections on Salome’s beauty. Over the top of this, Salome gloats: ‘You would not let me kiss your mouth, Jokanaan’. The music settles down and Salome praises the closed eyes that would not look on her, the silent tongue that spat venom... She compares Jokanaan’s voice to incense... The blending of sensations is Tristanesque. Finally she concludes: ‘The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death’. 

In the opera Herod now interjects. ‘She is a monster.’ We enter an evil place. ‘Ah! I have kissed your mouth Jokanaan’, sings Salomé to a chilling accompaniment. And then, as she exults, Strauss builds his music to its most radiant, lyrical and discordant height. A beam of moonlight falls on Salomé. Herod sees her kissing the head. He orders that she be killed. His men crush her under their shields.

This last scene has been described by musicologist Michael Kennedy as a ‘perverted Liebestod’. But we’ve come a long way from the love-deaths of Wagner's heroines who play redeeming roles in their dramas; Salome has few redeeming features as she upbraids Jokanaan’s trunkless head for not succumbing to her beauty.

In opera sometimes love, sometimes death wins, sometimes they both win in the same crushing conjunction. Either may be a soprano character’s fate, sometimes both.

Gordon Kalton Williams © 2012

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:
 
Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013
Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013
Scriabin's Piano Concerto, published 18 August 2013
Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich, published 27 August 2013
Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier selections, published
Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, published 30 August 2013
'Traditional terms' - an interview with John Adams, published 5 Sep 2013
Berlioz' Waverley Overture, published 9 Sep 2013
Tchaikovsky's Fatum, published 17 Sep 2013
Wagner, arr. Henk de Vlieger A Ring Adventure, published 29 Sep 2013
Tchaikovsky's 'Pathetique', published on 29 Sep 2013
Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony, published 13 October 2013 
Wagner's Flying Dutchman Overture, published 21 October 2013
Shchedrin's arrangement of music from Bizet's Carmen, published 25October 2013

Articles on mine on composers include:


Sousa and the Sioux, 19 August 2011
@ http://gordonkaltonwilliams.blogspot.com/2011/08/sousa-and-sioux-i-am-reminded.html

"...above the canopy of stars..." - Beethoven's Ninth, 28 May 2012
Percy Grainger, the chap who "wanted to find the sagas everywhere", 17 June 2012
A Star and his Stripes - Bernstein, the populist, 29 June 2012
Igor in Oz: Stravinsky Downunder, 17 July 2012
Wagner - is it music, or is it drama? 27 July 2012
"Beautiful...sad": Puccini's La boheme, 29 July 2012
Philippa - an opera [blog 1], ideas for an opera on Philippa Duke Schuyler, 16 Sep 2012 

'Traditional terms?' - an interview with John Adams, published 5 Sep 2013
@ http://gordonkaltonwilliams.blogspot.com/2013/09/traditional-terms-interview-with-john.html


On my website, click on "USA blog" to scroll down the full range.

Richard Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier" (extracts)

Continuing my series of program notes:

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Der Rosenkavalier, Op.59 – extracts

Der Rosenkavalier was the fifth of Richard Strauss’ operas, the second written in collaboration with librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The title (The Knight of the Rose) derives from a bit of stage business (purported to be an 18^th century custom, but invented by Hofmannsthal) whereby a knighted emissary presents a silver rose to a woman on behalf of her suitor. 

Robert Sterl's 1912 painting of Ernst von Schuch conducting Der Rosenkavalier

When it first appeared, Der Rosenkavalier was seen by many critics as a retreat from the atonal modernism of Strauss’s two immediately previous stage works – Salome and Elektra. Strauss had wanted to write a ‘Mozartian opera’ after Elektra, but Der Rosenkavalier has a sumptuousness which exceeds classicism. Its plot possesses some similarities with The Marriage of Figaro, but this ‘comedy for music’ is elevated by character portraiture that has rarely been surpassed in opera. It remains Strauss’ most popular, indeed best-loved, work.

Set in Vienna in 1740, Der Rosenkavalier, tells how the 17 year-old Octavian outwits the bullish Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau in his quest for the hand of the young convent girl, Sophie. But that is not all: it is a story of the magic of love at first sight; of nostalgia, self-sacrifice and the passing of time. Octavian, the ‘Knight’, first lays eyes on Sophie during the presentation of the Rose. Strauss’s orchestra wonderfully expresses the slow-motion intoxication of the moment. Octavian must first be given up by his older lover, the Feldmarschallin, Marie-Thérèse, who has known all along, somewhere inside, that one day he would fall for someone his own age, and whose realisation accounts for the change in the first act from amorous enthusiasm to mood of regret, and whose proud surrender is the background for the glorious Trio which climaxes the opera.
Strauss’ score retains a Mozartian level of beauty throughout (not even compromised by scenes of raw burlesque such as the stage-managed outwitting of Ochs in the Third Act). The ‘Viennese waltzes’, though anachronistic, are of such quality that, by this opera alone, Richard Strauss could almost challenge his unrelated namesake for the title of ‘Waltz King’.
Tonight’s extracts revolve around the three main characters – the Feldmarschallin, Octavian (sung by a soprano) and Sophie. During the orchestral introduction we can imagine the passionate love of Octavian and the Feldmarschallin between the sheets. The curtain rises. There is some minor bickering as when Octavian leaves his sword where Mahomet, the Feldmarschallin’s pageboy, might see it when he brings in her morning chocolate, but the big rift is yet to happen. They are still calling each other: ‘Mein Schatz!’ and ‘Mein Bub!’ After the Marschallin’s morning levée after everyone has left, including Ochs (‘der aufgeblasne, schlechte Kerl’), the Marschallin realises that she is growing older, and she tells Octavian that sooner or later (‘heut oder morgen’) he will leave her for a woman his own age. Vehemently denying it, he leaves in a huff. But Ochs and the Marschallin have arranged for Octavian to present the silver rose to Ochs’ fiancée, Sophie. Almost as if fated, he and Sophie fall in love. After the predatory Ochs has been driven off, Octavian finds himself face to face with the Marschallin who sees immediately that he has transferred his affections. She releases him to love the girl she said he would find ‘heut oder morgen’, and Octavian and Sophie express their disbelief at what has happened so quickly in ‘Ist ein Traum’. The Marschallin takes her leave, but Mahomet comes in once last time to collect the handkerchief she has left behind.

G.K. Williams © 2011

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013
Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013
Scriabin's Piano Concerto, published 18 August 2013
Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich, published 27 August 2013

Lyrical lessons from Der Rosenkavalier

Sometimes I despair of the endless recitativo of modern opera, this fallacious idea that the music should underscore the words. These passages remind me of Kenneth Hince's phrase: 'acres and acres of interminable mudflat', which he applied unfairly to Brahms, but which describes much contemporary opera better. I think this 'unending recitative' (which is not what Wagner asked for; he asked for 'unending melody') comes from a mistaken belief that words are the primary element in drama. They're not. It's the pyschological beat.
I believe that librettists can play their part to remedy this by creating events and situations that cannot fail but inspire melody, and instruct the composer not to follow the words, but to follow the metre, motivation and action.
I was intrigued by Der Rosenkavalier the other night because a lot of the vocal part is recitativo. Certainly Baron Ochs's part is mostly parlando. And yet the impression is not that dreary sub-lyrical sensation of contemporary opera. Why not? Because there is the constant lilt of waltz-time underneath, a frequent rising to peaks of melody. Opera situations have to rise to melody, or why bother?