Thoughts on Feuersnot & Capriccio (& an Oxford Strauss conference)

[Sean]

I went to a conference on Richard Strauss a week back at Oxford uni, UK. I didn't much like the cloistered ambience at Magdalene college, indeed originally being a monastery with genuine cloisters: there's what I can only describe as an unhealthy gaunt quiet, an extreme sense of seclusion and huge security measures, Rumpelstiltskin figures appearing and disappearing in out of date suits and batman capes, bouncy haircuts and formal speech, passing through great doors that close behind them, returning the ghastly silence.

I've complained enough about the music academia in the past: suffice to say there's nothing special about many of these top ranking characters on goodness knows what money, the most well-known figure there being a poor shuffling speaker with a botched talk concentrating on a vulgar and simplistic analysis of Feuersnot, Strauss's second opera of 1901. Indeed he's clearly under the sexual repression the work is concerned to remove...

The session before this concentrated on Feuersnot's libretto, by an Ernst von Wolzogen. The piece is a frothy comic affair that includes little of Strauss's best thought but has an interesting story: it has parallels with Das Liebesverbot and Tristan and concerns a town and a scorned suitor that is avenged by a sorcerer who extinguishes all its fire and light (Strauss had Munich in mind, his home town that failed to recognize his talent in Guntram in 1895).

The suitor is Kunrad who attempts to seduce Diemut, a virgin who hauls him up to her window in a basket but leaves him stranded half way to be mocked. After the lights are put out though the crowds now encourage the seduction and shout as orgasm is reached in an effective if rather less sophisticated version of the Liebestod. Their light is then restored, the daft magic or misguided thought that covered over illuminated reality being dispelled. I pointed out that the suitor Kunrad is only a few letters away from Kundry, both providing enlightenment and creativity through sexual experience.

By contrast Capriccio the final opera in Strauss's cycle of 15 ends with its question of the primacy of words or music unanswered- instead there's just a call to dinner: live life not art. The subject matter, being about art itself, is hence hermetic, not relating to anything useful in the world outside itself. The work represents the end of art and any usefulness it ever had, with the music's character itself very faded, autumnal and valedictory: Strauss is at the twilight of Western art, his long life encompassing all the Second Viennese School's notoriety- it angelically neutralizes and negates his own work, and all art.

Some songs were provided on one evening by a Cathleen Ferrier award winner, who was 25 and a completely unworthy recipient with a metallic tone that blurred further at high volume and made all the songs sound similar, in exactly a digitized, compressed-sound postmodern way, her brain already written out by destructive fine level cultural presuppositions she's not even aware of, almost totally and utterly useless.

http://straussatoxford2007.co.uk/

[Sean]

There's surely also a parallel between Wagner's and Strauss's first two operas- Guntram and Feuersnot and Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot ie being Germanic then Italianate buffa comedies.

[Guido]

I've complained enough about the music academia in the past: suffice to say there's nothing special about many of these top ranking characters on goodness knows what money, the most well-known figure there being a poor shuffling speaker with a botched talk concentrating on a vulgar and simplistic analysis of Feuersnot, Strauss's second opera of 1901. Indeed he's clearly under the sexual repression the work is concerned to remove...

The session before this concentrated on Feuersnot's libretto, by an Ernst von Wolzogen. The piece is a frothy comic affair that includes little of Strauss's best thought but has an interesting story: it has parallels with Das Liebesverbot and Tristan and concerns a town and a scorned suitor that is avenged by a sorcerer who extinguishes all its fire and light (Strauss had Munich in mind, his home town that failed to recognize his talent in Guntram in 1895).

By contrast Capriccio the final opera in Strauss's cycle of 15 ends with its question of the primacy of words or music unanswered- instead there's just a call to dinner: live life not art. The subject matter, being about art itself, is hence hermetic, not relating to anything useful in the world outside itself. The work represents the end of art and any usefulness it ever had, with the music's character itself very faded, autumnal and valedictory: Strauss is at the twilight of Western art, his long life encompassing all the Second Viennese School's notoriety- it angelically neutralizes and negates his own work, and all art.

http://straussatoxford2007.co.uk/

Capriccio - do you not think that the ending of the opera, apart from the final line being a punchline to a joke, Strauss is saying that ultimately music is the more important aspect after all - the final words are banal, whereas the final music is glorious and gorgeous...

[Superhorn]

  I recently took out the only studio recording so far of Feuersnot ,
conducted by Heinz Fricke with Julia Varady and  Berd Weikl in the principal roles, and found it delightful ; fresh,charming and witty .
  It's an opera that deserves to be poerformed more often.
I hope that Leon Botstein will do it with the American Symphony sometime soon here.
  There's also a live recording, I believe from the 50s , with Rudolf Kempe and the Bavarian State opera, which I haven't heard .
But the Digital studio recording , also from Munich is first-rate.
  Unfortunately, though, the libretto is in German only and in very small print. It's a good thing I have a magnifying sheet .
  The libretto also makes use of a Bavarian dialect so impenetrable at times that
the libretto uses standard German to translate at times ! But don't miss this .