Klarinet Archive - Posting 000039.txt from 2007/05

From: Simon Aldrich <simonaldrich@-----.ca>
Subj: [kl] Re:Strauss
Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 01:19:34 -0400

The discussion of Strauss made me think of a letter to the editor
from a conductor who studied with Hans Swarowsky, who Strauss took
into his home.
When Strauss's opera Daphne was done recently up here in Canada,
habitual imprecise allegations were made regarding Strauss's Nazi ties.
A letter was sent to one of our national newspapers, accusing the
opera Daphne of being "stained with blood".
The following is a rebuttal of sorts. It was written by Timothy
Vernon, artistic director of Pacific Opera (Victoria, BC) and
Orchestra London (ON).
(In the interest of full disclosure Timothy is a friend and former
teacher and conducted when I performed the concertos of John Adams
and Mozart with Orchestra London.)

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Simon Aldrich simonaldrich@-----.ca

Clarinet Faculty - McGill University
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre Metropolitain de Montreal
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre de l'Opera de Montreal
Clarinet - Nouvel Ensemble Moderne

Strauss, Daphne and Nazism
National Post
Published: Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Re: Is Strauss Opera 'Stained With Blood?' letter to the editor, Feb.
28, and consequent letters.

With regard to the recent correspondence about Richard Strauss and
his opera Daphne, the following observations are offered by way of
clarification.

No better book exploring the creation of opera in all aspects exists
than the collected correspondence of Richard Strauss with his
librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. When, after decades of intimate
collaboration on six operas, Hofmannsthal died suddenly of a stroke
in 1929, the heartbroken Strauss found in another Austrian Jewish
writer, Stefan Zweig, a new partner. Zweig adapted Ben Jonson's The
Silent Woman as Die Schweigsame Frau, to Strauss's great delight.
Attending the dress rehearsal in 1937, Strauss noticed that Zweig's
name had been removed from the posters and programs. When Strauss
insisted that Zweig's name be restored, threatening to withdraw the
production, Zweig's name reappeared, but the premiere was boycotted
by the Nazi leadership and Strauss was dismissed from his official
position (which had been given him in the first place without any
consultation or notification).

Strauss protected his Jewish daughter- in-law right through the war,
and was known to have helped others. My teacher in Vienna, Hans
Swarowsky, whom Strauss took into his household in Garmisch, told us
in class of the occasions when from a basement grating he would watch
as the Gestapo arrived at the front door, arrest papers in hand, only
to have Strauss face them down sternly. In 1948, Strauss was tried
and absolved of any and all Nazi ties or affiliations. In its first
issue of our new millennium, The New Yorker carried an article by the
music critic Alex Ross naming Strauss the composer of the 20th century.

I share the view of others that Strauss identified with the character
Daphne. Her isolation, her estrangement from a society which seems to
be running amok, and whose violence and irrational rituals she
reviles, reflect the old man's feelings about his own situation. Of
course it is no mere polemic; the music completely ennobles a weaker
text. For me this masterpiece has all the hallmarks of "late
period" (Beethoven, Verdi): terseness, density, highly evolved
personal idiom, dazzling but intensely controlled technical mastery
and a sublimity of lyrical inspiration unsurpassed anywhere in the
composer's oeuvre. Twelve years after its premiere, on his deathbed,
Strauss thought of Daphne as his "happiest invention." It is hard not
to concur.

Timothy Vernon, artistic director, Pacific Opera Victoria,
Saanichton, B.C.

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