GERMAN OPERA

Operetta

Operetta seems typical of Vienna in the later 19 th century, exemplified by the work of Johann Strauss, in works such as Die Fledermaus (The Bat), with its light- hearted intrigue and attempted marital deception. The tradition of operetta found other champions in composers like Franz von Suppé, and then, leading into the new century, in Franz Lehar and his contemporaries, with parallel success in Berlin. By the 1920s, however, the formula had worn thin, gradually to be replaced by musical comedy.

After Wagner

While Wagner may overshadow his immediate successors, his influence was enormous, reflected in the operas of Humperdinck and even, however reluctantly, of the latter's pupil, Wagner's son Siegfried Wagner. The latter's operas continue to explore a German world, but rather one of Grimm's Fairy Tales than of gods and heroes. In 1893 Humperdinck won his first success with his opera Hansel und Gretel (Hansel and Gretel), following this with other fairy- tale operas. Siegfried Wagner turns to weightier German legends in a series of operas that are only now finding an audience.

Richard Strauss

The true successor of Wagner is Richard Strauss, particularly in the remarkable series of operas in which he collaborated with the writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal, after the earlier success of Salome , based on Oscar Wilde's play of that name. Wilde's work had been banned in England, and Salome as an opera suggested new realms of sensuality to be explored, both dramatically and musically. Elektra in 1909 was followed by the moving nostalgia of Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose), a work of comedy and poignancy, an autumnal reflection of a mood of the time, set in the age of Mozart. Strauss continued after von Hofmannsthal's death in collaboration with Stefan Zweig and others. His last opera, Capriccio , was first staged in Munich in 1942. His debt to Wagner may be seen as musical rather than dramatic, reflected in orchestration and harmony.

Almost single-handedly, he carried the Wagnerian opera tradition and the Romantic Lisztian tone poem into the twentieth century. He is also one of the great composers of Lieder.

Strauss began to compose at an early age in an idiom which owed much to Robert Schumann. His father, a musical conservative, probably had much to do with this. Young Richard received fairly thorough instruction, but, despite this, was never completely at home in sonata form. His early works, including a string quartet (1879), a symphony (1880), a piano sonata (1880), a cello sonata (1882), and a violin concerto (1882) show serious miscalculations of form. However, we must remember that Strauss is still in his teens, and each new work shows an increasing mastery. His best works of the period are the first concerto for horn (1883) -- still in the repertory--and an astonishing piano quartet (1884), unaccountably neglected today. In the last work, Strauss forsakes Schumann for a brief encounter with Johannes Brahms and solves his problems with form at a single stroke. Still, Strauss concluded that Brahms, however great in himself, represented a dead end to would-be followers. He continued to search for his own idiom, and his next works are less assured than the piano quartet -- for example, the Burleske for piano and orchestra (1886) and the symphony Aus Italien (1886).

After he left the university and began a conducting career, Strauss met Alexander Ritter, a composer and poet, who converted him to the school of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. It took Strauss some time to master this new form, but the tone-poem Don Juan (1889) immediately established Strauss as an important figure. In it, he found his artistic self, particularly in the creation of astonishing, unheard-of orchestral effects, which was to occupy him throughout most of his career, and in a new sense of dramatic movement, derived from Wagner, but more quickly paced. Don Juan inaugurated a series of tone poems, all of which keep their hold on standard repertoire: Tod und Verklärung (1889), to a program by Ritter; Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (1894); Also sprach Zarathustra (1896); Don Quixote for cello and orchestra (1897), perhaps his most profound orchestral work; Ein Heldenleben (1898), which influenced later generations of modernists in its orchestration and use of dissonance.

In these poems, Strauss showed a powerful dramatic instinct. Hence, it is not surprising that he should want to try his luck on the operatic stage. His first two efforts -- Guntram (1894) and Feuersnot (1901) -- flopped. However, his Salome (1905), based on the play by Oscar Wilde, caused a sensation, and not only for its subject. The music stretched tonality, dissonance, and chromaticism. His next opera, Elektra (1908), stretched these things even more and marked the beginning of one of the great operatic collaborations -- between Strauss and his librettist, the poet Hugo von Hoffmanstahl. Elektra gave Strauss the reputation of an Awful Modernist, which his subsequent career refuted. He immediately retreated to a mainstream, late-Romantic idiom with his next works: Der Rosenkavalier (1910), his most popular opera, Der Bürger als Edelmann (1912), Josephslegende (1914), Eine Alpensinfonie (1915), Ariadne auf Naxos (1916), and Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), which the critic Ernest Newman considered the finest opera since Wagner. This was the idiom he stuck with for the remainder of his career. By the Twenties, a decade after Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps, Strauss seemed a ghost from the past.

However, the ghost had plenty of music in him. Hoffmanstahl died suddenly, and Strauss was thrown to searching for new librettists. He found fine ones and bad ones. The operas as well as the instrumental works became increasingly variable in quality. Highpoints include Arabella (1933), Die schweigsame Frau (1934), and Capriccio (1940).

During this period as well, Strauss became an official of the Third Reich, although his job was largely ceremonial, and he considered most of the powerful Nazis Philistines and barbarians. The fact that his grandchildren were part-Jewish made him keep his criticisms private. Even so, his private letters were read and he was warned. His silence and his continued residence in Germany caused him problems during the postwar de-nazification programs.

In the Forties, roughly twenty-five years after his last really good instrumental work, Strauss's instrumental music revived. From Capriccio at least, he became increasingly interested in the chamber ensemble and counterpoint. This produced such masterpieces as the second horn concerto (1942), Metamorphosen (1945) for twenty-three strings, the oboe concerto (1945), and the Duett-Concertino (1947) for clarinet, bassoon, strings, and harp. For those used to Strauss's earlier "punch-and-flood" idiom, typified by Heldenleben and the Symphonia domestica (1904), the late works present a puzzle. Indeed, many conductors today have trouble with them; the pieces require a degree of give-and-take found in the greatest chamber music.

Strauss's final work is a masterpiece and a culmination of his song-writing: Four Last Songs (1948), his most popular set. In general, Strauss survives as a song-writer by individual songs, rather than by cycles, unlike someone like, say, Mahler. One finds gems throughout his career, early through late.
Strauss became a whipping-boy for modernist critics, who regarded him as a moss-back and failed to discern how he led to modernism.


The Weimar Republic and National Socialism

The intervention of National Socialism had, in opera as elsewhere, an immensely damaging effect on the general creativity of German opera. The 1920s had brought a period of experiment, often outrageous enough in its defiance of tradition. Composers like Franz Schreker had explored the exotic world opened by Strauss's Salome . He was dismissed from his position in Berlin and died in 1934. Other younger composers like Schoenberg, Zemlinsky, Weill, Goldschmidt and Hindemith were driven into exile and often, therefore, into other forms of musical activity. America, where some took refuge, lacked the traditions of the German opera- house. Kurt Weill, who had collaborated with Bertolt Brecht in Berlin in Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera), a modernised and political version of The Beggar's Opera , turned to the American musical. Schoenberg left his great opera Moses und Aron unfinished. Zemlinsky did the same, never completing his last opera. Goldschmidt in England found almost as little opportunity as Hindemith in America, both having suffered from official censorship before their forced or chosen emigration. Schoenberg's pupil Berg, however, had added his own very distinctive contribution to German opera in Wozzeck, a study of madness and murder. At the time of his death in Vienna in 1935 he left his second opera, Lulu , unfinished.

Contemporary German Opera

Germany and Austria continue to offer a fertile ground for new opera. This is encouraged by the existence of a large number of efficient provincial opera- houses and a measure of enlightened public support. There have been notable new operas from composers such as Hans Werner Henze and remarkable experiment from Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others, expanding the possibilities of music- theatre.