Michael Kennedy From Casti to Capriccio: Strauss’s Theatrical Fugue’ It began under the shadow of Nazism. Since October 1932 Richard Strauss had been working on his comic opera Die schweigsame Frau to a libretto based on Ben Jonson by the Austrian Jewish novelist and biog- rapher Stefan Zweig. After Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s death in 1929, before a note of Arabella was composed, Strauss had despaired of find- ing a librettist with whom he could work amicably. In Zweig, to his relief and astonishment, he found one. Moreover, he found one who deferred to him and, while ready to argue points, was far less touchy and prickly than Hofmannsthal. He wrote to Zweig from Garmisch on 21 January 1934: The score of the first act is completed. This news I can give you today. I got 140 pages of the score done in 2 1/2 months, although my appointment as Reich Music Chamber President [in November 1933] produces a lot of extra work. I believe I should not refuse this task because the goodwill of the new German Government in. ' This essay draws primarily on the following sources: (1) A Confidential Matter: The Lenters of Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig, 1931-1935 (tans. Max Knight, from Richard Strauss Stefan Zweig Briefwechsel, ed, Willi Schuh, Frankfurt, 1957), Berke- ley and Los Angeles, 1977; (2) Richard Sirauss und Joseph Gregor Briefwechset 1934-1949: im Auftrag der Wiener Phitharmaniker; ed. Roland Tenschert (Salzburg, 1955; English translation of extracts in “Selections from the Strauss-Gregor Corre- spondence: The Genesis of Daphne,” trans. Susan Gillespie, in Richard Strauss and his World, ed. Bryan Gilliam, Princeton, 1992); (3) Richard Strauss - Clemens Krauss: Briefwechsel, Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giinther Brosche (Tutzing, 1997); (4) Rudolf Hartmann, Richard Strauss: die Buhnenwerke von der Urauffuhrung bis heute (Fribourg, 1980); in Eng. translation by Graham Davies as Richard Strauss: The Staging of his Operas and Ballets (Oxford, 1982), (5) Kurt Wilhelm, Fars Wort brauche ich Hilfe: Die Geburt der Oper Capriccio von Richard Strauss und Clemens Krauss (Nymphenburger, 1988); (6) Norman Del Mar, Richard Strauss, a Critical Commentary on his Life and Works (London, 1972). 3 vols., vol. 3 17172 MICHAEL KENNEDY promoting music and theatre can really produce a lot of good; and Thave, in fact, been able to accomplish some fruitful things and prevent some misfortune... Now what? What suits me best are South German bourgeois sentimental jobs; but such bull's eyes as the Arabella duet and the Rosenkavalier trio don’t happen every day. Must one become seventy years old to recognise that one’s greatest strength lies in creating kitsch? But, seriously, don’t you have some new, warm-hearted little theme for me?... Three days later Strauss suggested “a nice one-act” piece from Calandria by Bernado Dovici da Bibiena (1470-1520) as a complement tohis second opera Feuersnot (1900-01). Zweig vetoed it and suggested Kicist’s Amphitryon. “I supposc you arc right about Calandria,” Strauss replied, while scotching the Kleist (“not my line at all”). But the post- script to Strauss’s letter betrayed a glint in his eye: “I am waiting with intense interest for your Abbate Casti.” Zweig had told him that on a forthcoming visit to London he planned “to read through all the libretti Abbate Casti wrote for Pergolese [sic] who, second-class musician that he was, could not do justice to the great charm and the perfect comedy style of these texts.” [Zweig must have meant Paisicllo. Casti was only 11 when Pergolesi died.] The Abbé Giovanni Battista Casti (1724-1803) is not mentioned again in their letters until after they had met in Salzburg in August 1934 when Strauss wrote on the 20": “I am now impatiently waiting for further news from you, first the translations of the three Casti operas, then your drafts for them...” The further news he received from Zweig, in a letter written on 21 August, was an outline of a one-act festival play they had discussed earlier, Strauss had suggested something “ending up with the Peace of Constance, 1043, of the Saxon emperor Henry III.” Zweig countered with a piece set in the last year (1648) of the Thirty Years’ War. His synopsis was eventually to become Friedenstag. But two days later he sent a postcard from Vienna: Lam just studying Abbate Casti.. The small piece by itself is not usable, but could easily be adapted. Delightful is the title, Prima la ‘musica, poi le parole (‘First the music, then the words') which, in any case, ought to be retained for this light comedy... Casti’s divertimento teatrale was written to be performed in Feb- ruary 1786 in the imperial gardens of the Schéabrunn Palace in Vienna and was set to music by Salieri (1740-1825). It formed a double-bill with Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario). Casti’s plot is about a maestro di cappella (music director) and a poet who are re- quired by their aristocratic patron to produce a scena for two singers,FROM CASTI TO CAPRICCIO 173 one of whom is the patron’s mistress. The music director and poet argue about preparations for the opera. The former says it must be ready in four days, the latter wants longer. The music is already written, says the maestro, the poet need only write verses to fit the notes — it is of litle importance that the music should express the meaning of the text. Eleonora, one of the sopranos, shows off her ability by singing extracts from Sarti's opera seria Giulio Sabino (1781) and the maestro and poet stage a scene from the opera (the score quotes Sarti direct). This is interrupted by Tonina, a comic-opera soprano, and a comic aria is com- posed for her. The women quarrel over who is to sing first and end by singing together, one seriously, the other comically. The two harmonise perfectly and the poet and maestro join in the final ensemble. “Prima la musica, poi le parole is excellent,” Strauss wrote to Zweig on 24 August 1934. Then “How about Casti?” on 10 October, after blowing hot and cold about the Thirty Years’ War opera. A fortnight later Zweig wrote from London to say that “the scenario for the little one-act comedy is finished. I shall send it to you before I formulate the final version”. But that final version was not delivered. Towards the end of 1934, both Strauss and Zweig began to experience the difficulties caused by Germany's leading composer collaborating with a Jewish li- brettist once the Nazi régime had begun to promulgate anti-Jewish laws and to persecute Jews. The matter was further complicated in Strauss’s case. He held an official position, and he had a part-Jewish daughter-in- law, two grandchildren who were Jewish because of their mother, a Jew- ish publisher and a Jewish copyist. The Nazis too had a dilemma. If they banned a new opera by their leading composer, the damage to the new régime in international eyes would be great. Yet Die schweigsame Frau broke all their laws. The libretto was submitted by Goebbels to Hitler, who approved performances of the opera as a special exception. In December 1934 Goebbels, in a speech in Berlin, rejected the conduc- tor Wilhelm Furtwangler’s published defense of the composer Paul Hindemith, whose opera, Mathis der Maler, contained a scene attacking the burning of books — something which had occurred under the Nazis ‘on 10 May 1933 to books “unacceptable to the régime” — and had been banned from performance in Germany. On 18 February 1935, Zweig asked Strauss to delay performances of Die schweigsame Frau “in order to avoid any connection with the events in the musical world (Furtwiingler, and so on).” Strauss said there was no need to worry about anything now that Hitler and Goebbels had approved. “Dresden also has made its announcements for June-July, so fate must take its course.” He then made an extraordinary suggestion:m4 MICHAEL KENNEDY But for the future: should I have the good fortune to receive one or several libretti from you, let us agree that nobody will ever know about it or about my setting them to music. Once the score is fin- ished, it will go into a safe that will be opened only when we both consider the time propitious. Zweig must have been flabbergasted. He candidly reminded Strauss that it was inappropriate, in view of the historical greatness of his posi- tion, that “something in your life, in your art, should be done in se- crecy,” In any case, he said, the secret would be bound to leak out. He ‘was aware that for him, Zweig, to write a new libretto would be “a provo- cation,” but he would be happy “to assist with advice anyone who might work for you...without credit or reward.” Strauss was adamant. I will not give up on you just because we happen to have an anti- Semitic government now. I am confident the government would place no obstacles in the way of a second Zweig opera and would not feel challenged by it if I were to talk about it with Dr Goebbels, who is very cordial with me. But why now raise unnecessary ques- tions that will have taken care of themselves in two or three years? This is clear evidence that Strauss over-estimated his influence with the new régime and that (like many others in Germany) he lived in a cloud-cuckoo-land of belief that the Nazis would not be in power for long. Zweig then seemed to relent. He had been accepted as a member of the Association of German Playwrights and he suggested an opera based on the Spanish play Celestina (“a female Falstaff”). That was on 14 March. On 2 April Strauss told him that Goebbels had forbidden a second Zweig opera. He had told Goebbels that he would continue to compose Zweig texts in secret “for my desk drawer, for my pleasure. for my estate... Please continue to think also about the Westphalian peace and the Casti comedy.” Strauss continued to ply Zweig with ideas — Celestina pethaps; Semiramis — and when Zweig had two plays by Alexander Lernet-Holenia (a 38-year-old Austrian poet and novelist with whom he had collaborated) sent to Strauss, the composer erupted with indignation: “I frankly don’t know what to think of you. You cannot seriously believe that a man capable of publishing such silly, tasteless and witless stuff could write a libretto for me? ‘Two days later, 26 April 1935, Zweig put forward his intimate friend Joseph Gregor as “your best collaborator, and you would know that I, bound to him in friendship and to you in admiration, would participate in his work with true devotion.” Gregor (1888-1960) was a Viennese art historian, founder and director of the theatre collection in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Zweig set him to work on a SemiramisFROM CASTITO CAPRICCIO 175 libretto for Strauss. When Strauss read it, he described it to Zweig as “a fetus... Any critique is superfluous, A philologist's childish fairy-tal Now what? Please don’t you forsake me.” But Zweig knew by now that he had to forsake him, He wrote on 19 May: The official measures, instead of getting milder or more concilia- tory, have only grown harsher. Some of these measures cannot but offend one’s sense of honour... You will discover yourself, I fear, that the cultural development will more and more go to the side of, the extremists... As an individual one cannot resist the will or in- sanity of a whole world. Strauss replied: Neither of us can follow a path different from that prescribed by ‘our artistic conscience. Only one command exists for us: to be creative for the good of mankind. They met in Bregenz on 2 June. By 13 June Strauss had gone to Dresden for rehearsals of Die schweigsame Frau. He railed against Zweig for insisting on saddling me with an erudite philologist [Gregor]. My librettist is Zweig; he needs no collaborators... You write those two operas for ‘me, as you told them to me in Bregenz: 1684 (it was superb)! And the comic opera Prima la musica (in Eichendorff’s style for all 1 care ) — that’s all I need. He ended the letter: Here the rumor is making the rounds that you have assigned your royalties to the Jewish Emergency Fund. I have denied it. Strauss was obviously still terrified that his opera would run into trouble. The rumor was true and Zweig kept to his decision. He wrote to Strauss very frankly on 15 June ina letter that has not survived. But from Strauss’s reply we can safely deduce that Zweig had declared his solidarity with Jews persecuted by the Nazis and pointed out that as librettist of Die schweigsame Frau he could be viewed as a collaborator with a Third Reich official. And he seems to have mentioned two events in 1933 for which Strauss had been criticised: his substitution for Bruno Walter at a Berlin concert and for Toscanini in Parsifal at Bayreuth. Strauss replied from Dresden on 17 June. He was furious: This Jewish obstinacy! Enough to make an anti-Semite of a man! ‘This pride of race, this solidarity!... I know only two types of people: those with and those without talent... Who told you that I have ex- posed myself politically? Because I have conducted a concert in176 ‘MICUAEL KENNEDY place of Bruno Walter? That I did for the orchestra's sake. Be- cause I substituted for Toscanini? That I did for the sake of Bayreuth... Because I ape the presidency of the Reich Music Cham- ber? That Ido only for good purposes and to prevent greater disas- ters! I would have accepted this troublesome honorary office un- der any government... So be a good boy, forget Moses and the other apostles for a few weeks and work on your two one-act plays... The show here will be terrific. Everybody is wildly enthusiastic. And with all this you ask me to forego you? Never ever! Five days later a slightly mollified Strauss wrote again hoping Zweig was “not too angry” about the previous letter. Lam still so desperate about your obstinacy in wanting to foist on me your own work under someone else’s name. If you could just see and hear how good our work is, you would drop all race worries and political misgivings with which you, incomprehensibly to me, unnecessarily weigh down your artist's mind and you would write as much as possible for me and not have anything written by others. He was, as we would now say, “on a high” about the new opera. It was to be taken to London for a guest performance. Dr Goebbels, who will be here with his wife on Monday, will give a government subsidy for this. As you see, the wicked Third Reich has its good aspects, too. Poor self-deceiving Strauss! In his single-minded egocentric ab- session with his own work—and that was Strauss, you have to take him. thus or leave him — he could not begin to fathom Zweig’s position. Moreover, he did not know that his angry letter of 17 June had never reached Zweig. It was removed from the hotel postbox by a member of the Saxony Gestapo who sent it to the Governor of Saxony. Meanwhile on 22 July, the day of the dress rehearsal, someone told Strauss that the Dresden Intendant, Paul Adolph, had ordered the removal of Zweig’s name from the printed program. Strauss, while playing his favorite card- game Skat, suddenly demanded to see a proof. He wrote Zweig’s name back in and threatened to leave if it was not reinstated by the printer. He won his point, but Adolph was dismissed by the Nazis a few days later. The world premiére on 24 June was a success, but neither Hitler nor Goebbels attended, Strauss also attended the second performance on 26 June then returned to Garmisch the next day. The planned third perfor- mance was cancelled because Maria Cebotari, who sang Aminta, was ill. The performance on & July was broadcast. All subsequent perfor- mances in Germany were banned: some time after 26 June, the Saxony governor had sent Strauss’s letter directly to Hitler. On 6 July StraussFROM CASTITO CAPRICCIO 7 went to Berchtesgaden to meet Gregor the following day. There he was met by a Nazi official sent by Goebbels to demand his resignation as president of the Reich Music Chamber. Strauss suddenly realised that “race worries and political misgivings” were not incomprehensible. With fears for his family foremost in his mind, he wrote a terrified, grovelling letter to Hitler trying to explain his “improvised remarks” to Zweig. ‘The Fuhrer ignored him. After 29 June there is a gup of four months in the Zweig-Strauss correspondence. Strauss had taken from Gregor at Berchtesgaden draft librettos of Friedenstag and Daphne. He wrote to Zweig on 31 October complaining about Gregor’s libretto for Friedenstag (“your version is bettor fitted for the stago and more concise”). In Daphne he found “schoolmarm banalities.” Then he returned to the fray: ‘Wouldn't you yourself work on something for me? Celestina and Poi le parole, doppo la musica? {sic}... 1am mailing this letter from Tyrol and am asking that you had also better not write to me across the German border because all mail is being opened. Please sign your name as Henry Mor; [Henry Morosus is the nephew in Die schweigsame Frau) | will sign as Robert Storch (the name un- der which he portrayed himself in his opera Intermezzo]. It would be better if you were to send me mail by messenger or through Gregor. Effectively that was the end of the Strauss-Zweig collaboration. I have dwelt at length upon it because it is necessary to show how Joseph Gregor came on the scene and how much importance Strauss attached to the Casti one-act opera. Even though Strauss declared to Zweig that “my life seems to have definitely come to a full close with Die schweigsame Frau... Pity!” he could not live without work and he tack- led Friedenstag, being exceedingly rude to Gregor in the process. In fact, the libretto of Friedenstag is largely the work of Zweig, as was acknowledged for the first time in the program for the revival of the opera in Dresden in April 1995. It was the same with Daphne. This was Gregor’s work, but Strauss criticised it mercilessly until he got it into the shape he wanted. Gregor ended it with a choral apotheosis about which Strauss was never happy. He talked over the problem with his friend Clemens Krauss, who had conducted the first performance of Arabella in 1933 in Dresden. Krauss suggested a wholly orchestral de- piction of the metamorphosis of Daphne into a tree with just a few bars ‘of wordless melody from Daphne. This proposal was followed by Strauss. ‘What next? The idea of Celestina re-emerged. But the Swiss music critic Willi Schuh sent Strauss a copy of a periodical, Corona, in which ‘was printed the draft of a scenario, Danae, oder die Vernunstheirat178 MICHAEL KENNEDY (Danae, or the Marriage of Convenience), which Hofmannsthal had writ- ten for Strauss in 1920, For whatever reason, Strauss was not interested at that time, put it in a drawer and forgot it until 1933 when he gave it to the publisher of Hofmannsthal’s collected works, who printed it in Co- rona. This, Strauss declared, was what he now wanted. Poor Gregor ‘was again subjected to a barrage of verbal abuse and again, when there was a problem over how to end the opera, Krauss provided the solution. By now, Gregor must have been heartily sick of the mention of Krauss's name. The opera Die Liebe der Danae, was completed on 28 June 1940, when Germany had conquered most of Western Europe in the Second World War. Remembering that Die Frau ohne Schatten had suffered at its premiére in 1919 because of immediate post-war conditions, Strauss ordained that Danae should not be performed until at least two years after the cessation of all hostilities. “That is to say,”, he told Gregor, “it will take place after my death. So that’s how long you will have to possess your soul in patience.” Following his usual practice, Strauss had begun casting around for his next subject before he completed the music for Danae. In March 1939 he surprised Gregor by returning to the subject of the Casti one-act plece, envisaging it as a curtain-ratser to the double-bill of Friedenstag and Daphne, or to one of them. Gregor was aware of the composer’s interest in this subject because in June 1935 during a holiday in Zurich he and Zweig had discussed the Casti scenario with a view to converting it into a libretto for Strauss. According to Gregor neither of us knew what to do with it... We became obsessed with an idea: a group of comedians come upon a feudal German castle; they fall headlong into a delicate situation; a poet and a musician both sue for the hand of the lady of the castle; she herself does not know which to choose...we were at once of the same mind that such a band of players must have a magniloquent director, a blunt caricature of that so much revered Max Reinhardt, full of his art, full of the theatre. This scenario was sent to Strauss, with a covering letter from Zweig in which he bowed out of the venture. This annoyed Strauss so much that he rejected the draft. Now, four years later, he had looked at it again and within four days Gregor had revised it. “A disappointment” was the not unexpected response from Garmisch: Nothing like what I had in mind, ie. an ingenious paraphrase on the subject of First the words, then the music (Wagner)FROM CASTITO CAPRICCIO 179 or First the music, then the words (Verdi) ‘or Only words, no music (Goethe) or Only music, no words (Mozart) to jot down only a few headings! Inbetween there are naturally many half-tones and ways of playing it! These all presented in various light-hearted characters who over- lap and are projected into cheerful comedy figures — that's what I have in mind!... In Italian opera the prima donna and tenor regard the words as unnecessary as long as the cantilena is nicely executed and the notes themselves bewitch the ear... In.an opera which even half makes sense, if for whole stretches you don’t hear a word of the singer’s part — this is also impossible. Three hours long only notes — unendurable!. ‘The truth was that Strauss wasn’t completely sure what he had in mind. As far back as July 1933 he had spoken to Krauss ahout his ob- session with the relative importance of words and music in opera. In September 1939 he wrote to him that he wanted to write “an opera about opera, something wholly spirited and original. I really don’t want to compose another opera; I'd like to make something really special out of the de Casti, give it a dramaturgic treatment, a theatrical fugue (even good old Verdi resorted to a fugue at the end of Falstaff) — think of Beethoven's Quartet fugue — these are the sort of things old men amuse themselves with! I can’t say yet whether old Gregor is capable of some- thing like that... So far he has not understood what I really want: not lyric poetry, not drunken emotions but intellectual theatre, food for thought, dry wit...” Nothing that Gregor could produce matched these vague ideas. Strauss showed each Gregor draft to Krauss who was sav- agely critical, more critical than Strauss who, on 5 July 1939, had unexpect- edly described Gregor's latest draft as excellent...perhaps just what I had in mind: a pleasant comedy of intrigue with a deeper underlying idea! Of course everything now depends on the witty forming of the dialogue, which I imagine in natural prose (apart from the actual ‘songs’) and which I intend to compose as pure seco recitative (as in the prelude to Ariadne) just with piano accompaniment. On one day in Garmisch, Strauss and Kranss discussed the problem with the producer Rudolf Hartmann (who worked with Krauss in Frankfurt and Munich). Asa result, Strauss, Krauss and Gregor decided to submit asketch of the dialogue for the opening scene to each other for “judgment.” Strauss’s was adjudged the best, which enabled him to ask Gregor to cease180 MICHAEL KENNEDY “struggling with the ‘problem child’... I now intend to try my luck myself,” reminding him that he had written his own libretto for Intermezzo (1924). Strauss now decided on the date and place of the action: “a chateau near Paris at the time (about 1775) when Gluck was beginning his work on the reform of opera there.” Strauss thought the castle proposed by Zweig and Gregor should be the home of a young Count and Countess, perhaps twins. The Countess — who it was eventually decided should be a widow — would be not an insipid German girl but a 27-year-old French woman of the world with a correspondingly liberal attitude in matters of love and more serious aesthetic concepts than her brother, the philosophical theatre-lover and dilettante. He added: ‘The love issue concerning the Countess must run side by side with the artistic question of Words and Tone, Word or Tone; that she experiences the same sympathetic feelings for the poet as for the musician, but in a different way... He visualised a single act in four or five scenes and that the extra char- acters and episodes would be the theatre director (to be modelled on Max Reinhardt), two Italian singers, a string quartet, an actress (who has a liaison with the Count) and a rehearsal of a play. Strauss’s long outline of the plot can be summarized to show its salient points: I. Poet and musician with Countess. String quartet in honour of the Countess’s birthday. Corresponding sample of the poet's verses. Duet from the Italian one-act opera which the Director is preparing (here clearly in some sparkling dialogue the theatrical problem [words v music] is partly broached, partly settled). TL Countess, poet and m bringing to life the poet’s verses...by improving their musical set- ting, Ill. The big ensemble in which all theoretical concerns as well as those of the heart should be brought together culminating in the decision that poet and musician collaborate on the complete opera, 10 be perfurimed un the birthday of the Count and Countess in six weeks’ time. IV. The Countess alone with the song. After this outline, Strauss suggested further scenic details. The most significant were:FROM CASTITO CAPRICCIO 181 ‘The curtain rises after the quartet-introduction... The Countess is listening dreamily; on her right are the composer, poet and director, on the left the Count with the actress who is bored and they carry on a flirtation... When the music ends...the butler gives a sign to four young waiters to serve tea during which the five [finally eight] servants overhear snatches of the theoretical discussion which fol- lows. The Countess confesses she is stirred by music but perturbed by emotions she does not understand, hence is not wholly satisfied by absolute music. The Count...recites the poet’s verses... The Countess very much likes the poem but, as with music alone, is not wholly satisfied. Now the director contributes his view with the trite outlook of the man of the stage as regards the subordinate role of poet and musician alike when compared with the scenery, décor, the exhibiting of pretty girls, costumes and nice voices... Here also is laid the foundation stone for the later discussion of the five ser- vants who should represent the broad public... The great Quarrel Ensemble should begin with the introducing of the Italians’ duet, criticism of which sets off the debates... This could lead to the recitative scene between the Count and the actress so as to prove that spoken drama actually makes quite a different spiritual im- pression from the Italians’ sing-song with a wholly meaningless stupid subject as pretext. Out of the gradually developing quarrel comes the decision by poet and musician to write the real opera.. In the end, conciliatory resolutions: all three one-acters will be played and the Countess will give the ultimate judgment! Whether the scene of the servants, where they quarrel over which of the principles (that they have overheard) they should follow in con- cocting their satyr-play, comes next — that will emerge later. Each of them could suggest something different! The whole perhaps a whispered dialogue. When the Countess comes back they vanish! The basics of Capriccio as we know them are there, but much was yet to happen. Although Strauss’s decision to write the libretto himself rid him of Gregor, he was still unsure. I-can paint well-polished scores”, he wrote to Krauss, “but I need help for words [firs Wort brauche ich Hilfe. This phrase was taken by Kurt Wilhelm as the ttle of his indispensable book on the gen- esis of Capriccio]. You must write it. Krauss agreed to collaborate. One should in this respect be aware of Strauss’s letter to his designated biographer Willi Schuh, written on 10 December 1942, six weeks after the premiére: Krauss is so proud of his libretto that up until now Twas quite happy to ascribe the authorship to him, or at least 1 said nothing if he182 MICHAEL KENNEDY claimed it all to be his. I shall continue to say nothing for the sake of his other great efforts on my behalf and for my work. However, in the biography a few discreet statements must be made, in par- ticular that the main ideas came for the most part from me, the very deft formulations in the text (some entire scenes) were mainly by Krauss. Krauss’s scenario was more complex than Strauss’s, but it contrib- uted several important ideas. He did not want spoken dialogue. He enlarged the quartet to a string quintet and he suggested that the Count and Countess should be listening off-stage. He suggested that the poet should arrange a meeting with the Countess on the following day at the saune Lime as she fad agreed wy see the inusician and that the Countess, elegantly dressed, should enter alone after the servants have left. After her monologue, she leaves when the butler announces that supper is served. It was time now to think of detail. First, there was the question of the verse which the poet has written and which the musician sets to music. Krauss had an assistant conductor, Hans Swarowsky, in Munich to whom he gave the task of searching French literature of the period for something appropriate. Swarowsky found nothing in the period in which the opera was to be set, but found a sonnet by Pierre de Ronsard from the 16" century: “Je ne scaurois aimer que vous". Strauss was de- lighted and set it to music at once (on 1 December 1939). The final version in the opera is slightly different. Next, they needed to find a text for the Italian singers’ duet. Look in Metastasio, said Krauss, and in January 1940 he found a simple song of a youth parting from his loved ‘Addio, mia vita, addio, / Non piangere il mio fato; / Misero non son’io,” This is the duet between Emirena and Farnaspe concluding Act 1 of Adriano in Siria, a libretto set at least 65 times, by composers in- cluding Pergolesi. 'This particular text is one of Meyerbeer's early 6 Canzonettes italiennes (1810). However, Strauss has switched the first two stanzas of the tenor's text, e.g. in the Metastasio text the first stanza begins Se non ti moro allato, As the two men worked in the early part of 1940 in a flurry of correspondence about new ideas and revisions, the characters acquired names: the Countess, Madeleine; the musician and poet, Flamand and Olivier; the director, La Roche; the actress, Clairon (she really existed, Clairon Legris de Latude); the prompter, M. Taupe (mole). Only the Count remains anonymous. Thanks to the existence of their letters, we can trace almost day by day how the final libretto took shape. On 18 November 1939, the Italian Dancer was invented. Krauss researched the popularity of Gluck’s operas in Paris and was thus enabled to pin-FROM CASTITO CAPRICCIO 183 point the period of the action as the winter of 1776-7 (later they decided on May 1777). He discussed the real Clairon on 22 November. The next day he gave Strauss details of the programme La Roche devises for the Countess’s birthday — the “Destruction of Carthage” was proposed by Rudolf Hartmann as the genesis of the Quarrel Ensemble. What was originally conceived as a 45-minute curtain-raiser to the one-act operas Daphne and Friedenstag (an evening that would have lasted at least 3 hours 45 minutes without intervals!) was growing to larger proportions. Even so, Daphne was still being retained as the op- era to be composed by Flamand and Olivier, to be presented to the Count- ess and audience after the interval. (There are brief quotations from both Daphne and Ariadne auf Naxos in the score of Capriccio — between cue nos. 220 and 221 — which some conductors are barbarians enough tocut!) Krauss was dubious. Such a double-harness could easily lead to few performances. Strauss was eventually persuaded that the double- bill would be impracticable, whereupon he had a marvellous idea: the “opera-within-the-opera” in honour of the Countess’s birthday should be about the events in which she and her guests were participating. He thereby gave Capriccio its unique feature. It became a mirror-image of itself, and the mirror became its symbol. It cannot be chance or coinci- dence that the great melody which symbolises opera had been written 22 years earlier for the song-cycle Krdmerspiegel (Shopkeeper’s Mir- ror, 1918). It is said that Strauss had forgotten this melody and that his son Franz reminded him of it, saying that so beautiful a tune should not be buried in a song-cycle which had (then) only been printed privately because the 12 songs satirised the leading German publishers of the day with whom Strauss had been in dispute over performing rights. Itis difficult to believe that Strauss had forgotten the melody, since his memory for music, whether his own or others’, was phenomenal. In this case, too, the melody was singularly apt for its purpose. In Capric- cio Strauss was intent on projecting, with the lightest of touch, a de- tached view of opera as both sublime and ridiculous. The melody first insinuates itself into the texture in the orchestra when the Countess, who personifies opera, sings that the theatre unveils for us the secrets of reality. In its magic mirror (Zauberspiegel) we discover ourselves. The theatre moves us be- cause itis the symbol of reality (scene 9, five bars after cue no. 137). At the word “mirror,” the 1918 melody is first heard yet it does not flower fully until a few pages later when the Count sings “An opera is an absurd thing” and goes on to mock operatic conventions — “a murder184 MICHAEL KENNEDY plot is hatched in song...suicide takes place to music.” Strauss uses his melody for the dual purpose of underlining opera’s magic power to dis- close reality and its absurdity. This ambivalence was present, too, in Kriimerspiegel, where the melody occurs twice. In the eighth song it forms the long piano prelude and postlude to the words “Art is threat- ened by businessmen, that’s the trouble. They bring death to music and transfiguration to themselves.” Even more significantly, in the last song, it is re-introduced at the word Fulenspiegel (‘Owl-mirror’) when the singer asks who will stop these merchants’ evil ways and answers “One man found a jester’s way to do it — Till Eulenspiegel.” The melody, we discover, is a sublimated variant of Till’s principal motif. Nothing is more typical of Strauss’s genius at its ripest than the combination of Jesting and tenderness which makes ill Kulenspiege! the most endear- ing of the tone-poems. Capriccio, too, is suffused with a comparable blend of poetry and humour in perfect symphonic equipoise. Although Strauss did not complete the full score of Act 3 of Die Liebe der Danae until 28 August 1940, in the same month he began to compose Capriccio — the introduction (now a sextet) and the opening scene as far as the first words spoken by La Roche. He played the first two scenes to Krauss on 4 September. Later that month he re-wrote the Ronsard sonnet in F3, having decided that his original A major was too high. Krauss delivered the end of the libretto on 18 January 1941 and on 24 February Strauss completed the short score. The full score was com- pleted on 3 August 1941. I believe it to be the greatest, the nearest to perfect, of Strauss’s operas, comparable with Verdi's Falstaff in its summation of a long-lived composer's wisdom and mastery of form and content. There is no doubt that Salome is his most advanced and revo- lutionary opera score, uncuttable in its total cumulative impact, and that Elektra runs it close in emotional power. Die Frau ohne Schatten is the grandest of his scores, Ariadne auf Naxos the most original and elegant, Der Rosenkavalier the most appealing to the wider public, Intermezzo a very special case of melodic recitative transformed into unending melody, But Capriccio represents all the best in Strauss purged of the excesses which worry all but his most devoted admirers. It owes a lot to the conversational style of both the Prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos and In- termezzo, while the aura of gentle melancholy that suffuses the score derives from Act 3 of Die Liebe der Danae. This was the starting-point of what is known as his “Indian Summer” period when he regained all the freshness of his early invention and combined it with an autumnal. serenity and tenderness running through the whole of Capriccio, the instrumental masterpieces which followed from 1942 to 1948 and the final glorious effulgence of the Vier letzte Lieder.186 MICHAEL KENNEDY they have seen and heard during the afternoon; then the mysterious shad- owy music as M. Taupe the prompter emerges after having fallen asleep in the rehearsal-room. His subsequent dialogue with the major-domo is both touching and, in some indefinable way, haunting. The mirror-im- age of the work is retained to the very end, when Madeleine asks her own image in the mirror to find an ending for the opera that is “not trivial.” Her last gesture before going into supper is to glance in the mirror. As she leaves, the major-domo, astonished by her behaviour, looks back into the mirror as though he might find an answer there. The conflict between words and music is, possibly, left unresolved, but we can be in no doubt that Strauss wants us to believe that music has won. During rehearsals when Krauss was stressing to the cast the importance of clarity of diction, Strauss was heard to mutter: “Well, if a little of my music is heard now and then, I shan't object.” Next to the Countess, whose final aria is one of the high peaks in all Strauss, the most engrossing role is that of La Roche, the theater director. Like Clairon's, the name was borrowed by Gregor from real life. Johann Laroche or La Roche (1745-1806), a Viennese actor from. the Volkstheater, was the creator of the Wiener Kasperl, the Vienna clown or Punch (as in Punch and Judy). In an article in the Journal of the Rich- ard Strauss Gesellschaft (Vol.47, June 2002), Dagmar Saval-Wiinsche observes the similarity between La Roche's aria and much that was said. by Max Reinhardt to Arthur Kahane, his dramaturg at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin from 1902. In his Das Tagesbuch eines Dramaturgen (Diary of a Dramaturg, Berlin, 1926), Kahane quoted the transcript of a conversation with Reinhardt at the Café Monopol in Berlin in 1902. Reinhardt spoke of his vision of the theatre as a place that gives pleasure to people, that leads them away from the grey mis- ery of everyday life to the cheerful atmosphere of beauty.... lam not afraid to experiment if I believe in its value, but will not experi- ment for experiments sake... I believe in a theatre that belongs to the actors. These are not the actual words of La Roche in the opera, but they prob- ably gave Gregor the idea for the character, But it was Krauss who rounded him out more fully and, almost certainly, Strauss who injected the real meat into the text of the aria. Krauss wrote to Strauss concern- ing his own first draft of the text: [La Roche] should justify himself as the specialist of the theater whose duties even embrace light music, but only where it is on an artistic level, Singspiel, or good comic opera and ballets... [he] should nevertheless remain a sympathetic advocate for practical thinking in the theater, which also supports great art out of its pro-FROM CASTI TO CAPRICCIO 187 ceeds... His speech should finish comically and bombastically, per- haps so that he blows his own trumpet and crowns himself with the halo of the Art Patron... As a result he somehow remains a sympa- thetic figure and never sinks to the level of a provincial hack. Modeled on Reinhardt he may have been, but his words are often the voice of Strauss himself, the practical man of the theatre, the voice so often to be heard in the correspondence with Hofmannsthal, In Strauss, there is nothing else for a male singer to compare with La Roche’s big aria or diatribe; this is perhaps the most novel feature of Capriccio. Surely it is Richard Strauss the anti-modemist who says: 1 preserve all the good things that have been written; the art of our fathers lies in my trust... Where is the masterpiece today that speaks to the hearts of the people, in which their souls are seen reflected? Teannot discover it Other quotations from this aria deserve attention later, Six days before Strauss completed the full score he wrote to Krauss: I'm taking great trouble to ensure that the last scene is especially beautifully orchestrated for our dear friend! {the soprano Viorica Ursuleac, Krauss’s mistress and later his wife]. “Therefore the harps,” as dear old Bruckner used to say about his trombones. The opera was now known as Capriccio, but the title had not been de- cided until 6 December 1940 at Krauss’s suggestion after they had dis- cussed many alternatives. Strauss was still not entirely convinced and hankered after The Sonnet or The Countess's Sonnet. But Capriccio it be- came, Itwas Krauss, too, who suggested the subtitle of “conversation piece.” Now came the question of performances. In spite of his ban on a performance of Die Liebe der Danae, Strauss does not seem to have been so adamant about Capriccio. Moreover, he was indebted to Krauss, who was in favor with the régime. Krauss had been music director of ‘Munich Opera since 1937 and had built up a Strauss repertory with some fine singers. But since September 1941 he had been artistic director of the Salzburg Festival and it was there that Strauss wanted Capriccio to be performed, On 12 October 1941 he wrote to Krauss: If the festival hall in Salzburg is more intimate than the Hoftheater in Munich and the acoustics at least good enough for the text to be well understood (that is unfortunately not the case in Munich), we would of course have to try it out first — this would be the factor to outweigh all other considerations. Don’t forget Capriccio is not a piece with universal audience appeal, atleast not for an audience of 1800 people per evening. It is perhaps a delicacy for cultural con-168 MICHAEL KENNEDY noisseurs (musically not very important, in any case not so tasty that the music will help out if the great public fails to warm to the libretto). That is why this unusual litle baby has to be presented in a special cradle and that means the Salzburg Festival! Audiences go there specially and apply different criteria. But Krauss won the argument. He wanted Capriccio as the climax of a Strauss Festival in Munich in the summer of 1942 for which he had gained Goebbels’s approval. But the festival was postponed because of transport shortages caused by military requirements and because the baritone Hans Hotter, who was to sing Olivier, suffered from hay-fever every June. The Capriccio premiére was fixed for 28 October 1942 in the Nationaltheater, Munich. Swauss installed himself in the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten, attended all the rehearsals and played Skat with some of the singers, including Franz Klarwein and Hotter, until midnight. (They let him win because they wanted to go to bed.) Ursuleac, who had cre- ated Arabella and the Commandant’s Wife in Friedenstag and was to create Danae, sang the Countess, Horst Taubmann was Flamand, Hotter Olivier, Georg Hann La Roche, Walter Hofermayer the Count, Carl ‘Seydel was Taupe, and Irma Beilke and Franz Klarwein the Italian sing- ers. The role of Clairon, written for contralto, was re-written by Strauss for the soprano Hildegarde Ranczak (this, and an alternate version for Madeleine, is to be found in the Richard-Strauss-Institut in Garmisch), but today is usually sung by a mezzo-soprano, Hartmann produced it and the décor was by Rochus Gliese. Strauss described exactly what he wanted for furniture and lighting. Goebbels did not attend the premiére, which was given under his patronage. This was a victory for Krauss, because Strauss was out of favor. Because of almost nightly air raids on Munich, which began at about 10pm, it was decided that the performances should start at 7pm so as to be over by 9.30 and that the opera should be given without an interval. Hartmann states in his book on the staging of Strauss operas (see note 1) that Strauss and Krauss had planned for an interval (but the score when published said “in one act"). It is usual today to have an interval, Hartmann reverted to this format for the Paris premiére in 1957. ‘The Strauss authority Norman Del Mar calls it “an iniquitous custom,” but few would agree. Hartmann vividly recalled the atmosphere sur- rounding those first Munich performances: Who among the younger generation today can really imagine a great city like Munich in total darkness, or theater-goers picking their way through the blacked-out streets with the aid of small torches giving off a dim blue light through a narrow slit? All this for theFROM CASTITO CAPRICCIO 189 experience of the Capriccio premiére. They risked being caught in a heavy air raid, yet their yearning to hear Strauss’s music, their desire to be part of a festive occasion, and to experience a world of, beauty beyond the dangers of war led them to overcome all these material problems. A further 15 performances were given in 1942-3, with some changes of cast. Klarwein sometimes sang Flamand and Carl Kronenberg Olivier. ‘The final performance was on 17 June 1943 in honour of Strauss's 79” birthday a week earlier. This was broadcast and a recording of it has since been issued. Four months later, the Nationaltheater was destroyed by bombs. Peiformances of Capriccio followed in Hanover, Darmstadt, Bielefeld, Dresden, Ziirich, and Vienna. The first Salzburg production was in 1950, conducted by Karl Bohm, who had hoped to conduct the world premicre as he had done those of Dic schweigsame Frau in 1935 and of Daphne (dedicated to him) in 1938. The first London perfor- mance was in 1953 (by a visiting company); in the United States in 1954 (at the Juilliard School of Music); and at Glyndebourne (to which it is ideally suited) in 1963. Far from being a piece for connoisseurs, Ca- priccio has entered and remained in the regular international repertory. Is this a triumph for words or music? The words are brilliant, but it is the music that has endeared this great opera to so many listeners. The question has often been asked: how, in 1940 and 1941, with Europe at war and with tyranny on the march in his own country, could Strauss have written an opera so far removed from the spirit of the time? How could he sit at his desk in Garmisch concocting an aesthetic argu- ment on the supremacy of words or music when the world was engulfed in suffering and thousands were dying not only on the battlefield but in concentration camps? If we were to purge the world of works of art, music, and literature that bore little relation to the times in which they were created, we would deprive ourselves of many masterpieces. Strauss’s case 1s complex, as the first part of this essay will have shown. One answer he himself might have given is that he was a Nietzschean and believed that art is the one and only justification of life. That is a philosophy which could not be sustained today, but to a 19% ccntury man like Strauss it presented no difficulty. I doubt that he would have put forward the defence, if defence were needed, that his work on Danae and Capriccio was what has bccn called “inner emigration,” an escape from reality into one’s creative kingdom. ‘Two principles governed Strauss’s life, and one must accept them or reject him entirely. The first was the all-consuming obsession with his own music, the other his passionate love for his family. The number190 MICHAEL KENNEDY of performances of his works and the royalties they accrued were of overwhelming importance to him, not because he wanted to live in a regal style, but because they provided the security he desired for his family. It was as simple as that, He had lost a large amount of money in both world wars when his foreign royalties were frozen or confiscated. But Strauss’s position vis-a-vis the Nazi régime at this time was far from simple. In spite of his dismissal in 1935, the Nazis, while keeping him at arm’s distance, knew that he was still an indispensable interna- tional asset. Thus, they allowed him to visit London, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere. But if they needed him, he especially needed them if he was to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice and her sons. If that meant conducting under Goebbels’s auspices here and there, it was worth it. And it was worth it because in November 1938, the time of the Kristallnacht persecution of the Jews, stormtroopers went to the Garmisch villa hoping to find and arrest Alice, who had been hidden by friends. At the same time, the elder grandson Richard, aged 11, on his way to school, was asked by a stormtrooper “Where is your Jew mother?” and was taken to the town square to watch Jews being manhandled. His brother Christian, aged six, was fetched and forced to spit on Jews. ‘Suauss then begun to trade on his position to win some special privi- leges for Alice, his son Franz (her husband) and their children. In the spring of 1941 he won limited “Aryan” status regarding education for the grandsons but nothing for Franz or Alice. At this point, the Gauleiter of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, enlisted Strauss’s help in building up ‘Vienna as a cultural capital. Schirach was out of favor with Hitler and Goebbels and knew that Hitler was unrelenting on “the Jewish ques- tion.” But he needed Strauss (who owned a villa in Vienna) and gave him vague promises of protection that, more or less, he kept. In Decem- ber 1941, Strauss and his family moved to Vienna; thereafter he com- muted between there and Garmisch as occasion demanded. Schirach’s reward was the first performance of the Sextet trom Capriccio on 7 May 1942 at a private gathering in his house. During 1942, before Capriccio was performed, Alice’s grandmother was incarcerated in Theresienstadt con- centration camp, where she died. Twenty-six of Alice’s relatives also died inthe camps. In February of that year, Strauss was summoned to Berlin and subjected to insulting verbal abuse by Goebbels. These are merely some of the facts of the cat-and-mouse game played between Strauss and the Nazis from July 1935 to 1944, It was a game in which Strauss was prepared to sacrifice his good name in order to protect his nearest and dearest. Who shall blame him? It was againstFROM CASTI TO CAPRICCIO 191 this background that Capriccio was composed. We need to look at some of La Roche’s aria in this context where he refers to the vulgar forces our capital city finds diverting... The masks have been removed, to be sure, but you see caricatures instead of human coun- tenances! You despise these goings-on, yet you tolerate them! You make yourselves guilty by your silence. Perhaps Capriccio is not “escapist.” It was, though, a success, When a critic wrote that it was a piece for connoisseurs Strauss, forgetting his own earlier misgivings, wrote to Krauss quoting La Roche: “Will it not really ‘speak to the heart of the people’?” He knew it was his testament, the best conclusion to his life’s work for the theater. “Do you really believe that after Capric- cio...something better or even just as good could follow?” The last mu- sic he ever conducted, two months before he died, was the Moonlight Music. He always knew how to make a good end.