The Metropolitan Opera is about to open a new production of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto. The court of Mantua circa 1600 has been changed to Las Vegas, circa 1960. The Duke of Manuta becomes Sinatra-esque. Rigoletto himself possible as Don Rickles. I like it. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
I like the singers involved and I admire the commitment I see in the above clip. This by way of assuring those who care that I'm not mired in nostalgia.
Aldo Protti 1955
This morning I stumbled upon a 1955 RAI telecast of Rigoletto. There is not one outstanding voice here-except Virgina Zeani. The technical quality is sixty years old. But I want you to look at the performance below and notice the superb diction. You could take dictation. All of them singing in their own language but these singers regard the language as crucial. Note also the posture. Even in a TV studio everyone carries him/self with wonderful posture, standing a straight line from the belly button on down. The movements are fluid and easy on the eye. Opera was important to these artists. The staging is uncluttered and clear. If you don't need to move you don't move. No flailing around "all about the place"
I've heard outstanding voices in this opera: Pavarotti, Milnes, Peters,Sutherland, Mac Neil I loved them.
The over all performance in this ancient TV film I find both gripping and strangely moving. I couldn't watching it. The singers weren't working to become the characters. They were the characters. Notice too that in three minutes Countess Ceprano becomes a major role. Look at Aldo Protti's face at Monterone's curse. Sparafucile is no cloaked bandit but a king in his own realm.Watch for the elegance and clarity-as the story is told through music, words, gesture and attitude. I won't say those were the days because I wasn't there. I will say that this Rigoletto, in fuzzy black and white, with no "names" is wonderful. Do you agree:
Opera is a rich world. Unlike many, I believe the new and the not so new can co-exist. When treated with respect, intelligence and love, opera will thrive in Mantua and in Vegas.
John Schwartz is a writer for the New York Times.
He's the author of a new book called Oddly Normal: One family's struggle to help their teenage son come to terms with his sexuality.
I think every parent should read this book. Lessons learned include keeping a marriage strong in the face of problems, and stopping at nothing-nothing-to help your kid.
Joe was thought to have OCD, ACD, and every other damned D. Some teachers were stumped and some were hostile. Some were kind. Joe was tested and IEP-ed and shamed and rescued by his parents and his own fortitude. A pink boa helped.
The book begins when young Joseph Schwartz attempts suicide at age 13. Being a gay kid at school, with a long devotion to pink boas and Barbie does not make him friends. The bullying became unbearable. Something had to change. Joseph had to grow into peace and acceptance, and this book is the story of the road leading him to a productive happy life. (Yes, the book has a happy ending.)
The Schwartz family has two older children, Elizabeth and Sam. Their mother Jeanne is the ferocious warrior of this book, the heroine of the story as all mothers deserve to be.
Read Oddly Normal. It's great for any parent for any reason...and their friends. Pages 243 to 268 eill change your life!
Yesterday I spoke with Joseph Schwartz from his office in Hew York:
JS:: I've had many man e mails from parents. Its a real testament to how difficult child rearing is. Parents say, my kid isn't gay but this is my kid. Any kid who is different , but especially the parents of gay kids have sen so much of this, so much of the kid's self-directed bullying...
CP: Adolescence is terrible enough, never mind any added complications.
JS: Right! "Ain't I got enough problems?" Remember that a kid at thirteen, what you really want is to be like everybody else, and then you come up with these differences, and especially this big one . It can create a very pervasive feeling of isolation.
CP:: Your book is called Oddly Normal. The book opens with something terrible, a suicide attempt by a 13 year old, but there is a happy ending to the book. I hope that's still true?
JS: Absolutely. The story's not over. Every day is interesting. But things are so much better than they were. We've come such a long way and that's really the point of the book. Its about the 'getting better' part.
CP: You have two older children, Elizabeth and Sam. You describe Sam as all-boy. He's a jock, he's tough, he's outgoing, What was the effect on them when this was going on with their kid brother.
JS:: They're great kids. They've got gay friends. It didn't matter to them that Joe turned out to be gay. The only reaction ...Sam's reaction was "Huh. OK."
Elizabeth's reaction was "So that's why he was always stealing my jewelry...!
CP: In the book we meet Joseph as a young boy, and you went everywhere trying to get some answers. If you asked twenty- five people you'd get twenty- five different answers. That's what was so compelling in the book. The journey of finding out what was going on with him. Were you getting a lot of help?
JS: We were trying to get help. Everybody contributed something but much of what they contributed wasn't useful.
CP: You discuss the possibility of a link between autism and homosexuality. This hasn't been proved at all but its the first time I heard of a possible connection
JS: It's something that seemed interesting. I had a friend at work who suggested this might be the case -someone who's son is on the spectrum and who she thought might turn out to be gay ...but nobody's got any numbers.
One of the People I asked is Steve Silberman who is writing what I think is going to be a terrific book called 'Neurotribes' , where he talks about different brains , different experiences, what's going on on the on the spectrum. He's very interested in gay issues as well. He said that he too had heard tantalizing ideas but he hasn't seen any research that lays this out.
CP:You write that Joseph was interested in "girl things" from the time he was a toddler. Did you get any flack from your peers or other parents Did anyone say put him in Little League for God's sake.....
JS:: Not really. No. Luckily for us that was never an issue. People didn't want to seem to tell us how to live our lives. Or how to raise our kids. One of the very nice things about having your third kid as opposed to your first kid that you're not even paying attention to what people are saying any more. You barely remember the kid's name. By the time it the third kid you have fewer worries..and that's when life hands you something interesting. Right?
We really thought we had this thing down.
CP: You and your wife have to be exceptional parents because you weer taking
Joseph into a gay social center for teens in New York, you were doing everything you could to make him feel comfortable in the world. ...
JS: It was essential that he know -he over arching feeling he expressed to us was he just felt alone. He felt he was going to die alone. He felt he was just going to be weird. We had to show him he wasn't weird. We sent him to theater camp. Look, we told him, its no big deal to be gay here. Then we went tot he gay center in New York. They have these amazing youth programs. He got to see kids who have been through a lot but who were warm, open, inviting . He saw that he's part of a range . There's not just one way to be gay. There's not just one type of gay. It can be a community.and an identity. Part of who he is. Bit by bit, Joseph relaxed..
CP: All of this must have been hard on your marriage
JS:: We felt it strengthened us. We know plenty of peoples who have had problems with their kids, and its driven them apart. We were looking at what felt like a hostile world, and we had to stick together. We had different roles. I was the good cop, Jeanne was more the bad cop. We were on the same force.
We had to deal with the schools. We had to deal with therapists. We needed to move and to help Joe. For us it was a kind bonding as opposed to the driving apart you see happening.
CP:: What has the journey of the book been with Joseph?
JS: Of course I would not have even proposed the book if Joe hadn't given me his approval. We talked about it.. I told him I think it would help people, and he said yeah you should do that. I replied I want you to really consider it. This will not be a totally happy book for you. I'm going to talk about the pills. I'm going to talk about the hospital. And Joe replied..I said, do it!
It was also the statement of a kid who like so may of his peers is on facebook, and who talks about his life. Its the comment of a kid who father is a journalist , who has written about his kids in the past. His older brother and sister especially grew up with the occasional first person story talking about something they've done. Whether its Sam being on a losing football team, or his college work as a nude art model!
The point is that Joe had seen me talk about the family before. He's part of a movement of the kids at the center where they talk about what they've been through to help each other. He saw this as part of that tradition. He knew what the book was going to say. I showed him the manuscript. We talked abut his complaints and how to address them. He helped me revise the book to reflect his views He partnered all the way through.
As I was turning the manuscript in he sends me n e mail -he says, I wrote this ridiculously adorable story for a class assignment. It's a children's book called Leo, the Oddly Normal Boy. It's about a little boy who likes other boys and who gathers up some flowers and some chocolate and writes a poem and presents it all to another boy. And what happens after that.
Its a wonderful story. It made me cry....
CP: I must tell you that I passed that around the office here and everybody cried.
JS: That's now the last chapter of the book .
So how's Joe doing with the book? Joe helped write the book. Joe is the book. He's proud of that. At the same time its a little humbling for me to put in 800 words at the end of the book that do more than I was able to do with 60,000.
CP: Parents discover their kid is different in some way. They're angry, they're pissed off. they're scared, what do you tell them?
JS:: I tell them the only piece of parenting advice I've ever heard that's worth the words , and that is what Dr. Spock told us in his child care book many, many years ago. Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) was the dominant figure in America's concert live form 1937 until his death twenty years later. David Sarnoff and RCA created the NBC Symphony for the Maestro. Concerts were broadcast weekly form Studio 8-H in New York, and these programs made Toscanini famous to all, after a fifty year career that began in the cello section of the word premiere of Verdi's Otello.
Toscanini led the world premieres of La boheme, Pagliacci and Turandot. He gave the Italian premiers of Wagner's Ring operas (with the extraordinary tenor Giuseppe Borgatti as Sigfrido). By 1937 he had served music directorships at La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. He had given concerts with the BBC Orchestra and the London Philharmonic. The Maestro journeyed to Palestine, accepting no fee to lead the inaugural concerts of the Palestine Symphony (today the Israel Philharmonic)
He was an ardent anti-fascist who was beaten up by Mussolini's thugs in the early 1930s, for refusing to play the fascist hymn, Giovinezza. Toscanini conducted Tannhauser and Tristan und Isolde at Bayreuth, refusing to return after 1933."I cannot go against my conscience as an artist and as a man."
He had love affairs with celebrated divas, children out of wedlock and a long marriage to Carla Di Martini.
Cesare Civetta is himself a noted young conductor. In 1976, when Civetta was very young indeed, he produced a radio series for WFUVin New York. UnderstandingToscanini featured interviews with musicians, critics, writers and members of the NBC Symphony. From them and from Maestro Civetta we have the present volume, The Real Toscanini: Musicians Reveal the Maestro.
Toscanini was known for his volcanic temper, and this is acknowledged in context. He was often enraged at himself, when he felt that his own powers were not up to the music at hand. Themes emerge as to the Maestro's demands on himself and others, but also on his humility, kindness and phenomenal memory. He could be paternal and he could be severe. Today one of the few criticisms is the fast tempi Toscanini was thought to favor
"For me it was never too driving. It was never too fast for me. It was always under control, no matter what tempo. He knew exactly what he was doing".--George Koutzen, cellist NBC Symphony
"Toscanini sought expressive quality through dynamics or texture, not through tempo, which was the constant" --Robert Shaw
Cesare Civetta
Cesare Civetta has produced a book by a musician with musicians about the supreme musician. The best books on music lead you back to the music itself, and The Real Toscanini is no exception. I read this twice in one sitting-and will read it again. It's a rich book. informative and entertaining. And every so often I put it down to listen to the Maestro in concert. I returned to the music,. as I'm sure Toscanini would have wished.
Vedem (Czech: "In the Lead") was a magazine cobbled together by the teenage boys living in a "dorm" at the Terezin (Theresianstadt) concentration camps. It was thought by the Jewish elders of the camp that children would be better served if they could be distracted-even a little-from the horrors surrounding them.
Very few of the boys survived. The elderly gentleman in the clip are among them:.
Lori Laitman has written an oratorio called Vedem, using the actual texts these children wrote as they faced death. David Mason wrote the libretto. Mina Miller writes:
"Every Friday night for two years between 1942 and 1944, they read aloud their week's contributions...At age fourteen, Petr Ginz became Vedem's first and only editor-in-chief. At age sixteen he was sent to his death in Auschwitz.
The oratorio of Vedem is important because it's beautiful, and Lori Laitman's music returns and amplifies the humanity of these boys so prevalent in their writing. The score is melodic, clear, simple and deeply moving. The words are set to be heard. The words in of themselves are not high poetry. But I'll say it again, they were written by children facing death.The work is scored for boy's choir, clarinet, cello and piano.
Vedem was recorded by Naxos shortly after the 2010 premiere in Seattle.
Music from the holocaust (inspired by? devoted to? written during?) is not new. We've had cabaret songs, cantatas, art songs, oratorios. Composer Paul Krasna died at Auschwitz. His opera Brundibar was written for the children at Terezin to perform. Viktor Ullman is remembered today for his opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis in his death in the gas chambers. Contralto Ottilie Metzger perished, as did violinist Alma Rose, who was Mahler's niece. Tragically, on and on and on and on.
Vedem is simple and moving and let's the context of the words work their their magic.
Thank you, Lori Laitman. Boys, God bless you.
The School of Music at The Ohio State University presents Verdi's FALSTAFFin Mershon Auditorium, Friday May 4 at 8 pm and Sunday May 6 at 3.
The production is staged by A. Scott Parry and conducted by Marshall Haddock. The costumes are by Christine Kearney. Todd Thomas sings the title role, surrounded by a (wonderful) all student cast.
The Sunday performance is broadcast live on Classical 101.1 FM... on line at www.wosu.org/classical101
Falstaff by Gruzbeck
Falstaff! The final opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The composer was eighty years old at the opera's premiere at La Scala, Milan in 1893. He may have protested too much, crying "think to my age" when enticed by his librettist Arrigo Boito to end his career with comedy, and one of the composer's greatest loves, Shakespeare.
Verdi and Shakespeare were old friends. Macbeth was his first turn at the Bard, in 1847. The composer considered this opera a favorite child, revising it in 1865. To then end of Verdi's life there were hints at King Lear. In the past ten years scraps by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert have been found. Who knows what lie in the attic and cellars at Sant'Agata, Verdi's estate outside Milan?
Otello came forty years after Macbeth. Verdi had settled into a peaceful retirement, so he said. His letters at the time say he was content and finished with the theater. I don't buy it. The composer of Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La Traviata, Don Carlo (written for Paris) La forza del Destino (written for Russia) and even I masnadieri (written for London and Jenny Lind, no less) can't have been happy sitting watching the flowers grow, lovely estate or not.
Verdi (R) with Boito at Sant'Agata
Verdi and Arrigo Boito had met years before-the esteemed composer, a world celebrity, and an angry young man making his way at the expense his betters. A hot and heavy affair with Eleonora Duse gave Boito some social cachet. Boito's relationship with Verdi grew into friendship with Otello. Boito's Italian language libretto has been called superior to Shakespeare's play (I ain't goin' there). Verdi's music was sensational. The opening storm choruses hav the audience reaching for rain gear to this day. There is no love duet more deeply moving than that between Otello and Desdemona at the close of Act I. The haunting kiss motive will come back, haunting indeed, at the end of the opera.
"Opera needs laughter as well as tears" Verdi said. His one comedy was his second opera, Un giorno di Regno (King for a Day) written during a time of deep personal tragedy, nearly fifty years earlier. It seems that killing 'em off was more lucrative. But there was Verdi, fresh from Otello's triumph, in his cool, dark rooms in Milan-applause ringing in his ears-leafing through Shakespeare. It was Boito who came up with the idea for Falstaff, helping himself to The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV.
The French baritone Victor Maurel, Verdi's first Iago, put on the phony belly and took the title role at the premiere. Guess what? Maurel recorded Falstaff's little ditty from Act II, Falstaff's "seduction" of Alice
Ford.
When I was a pageboy to the Duke of Norfolk, I was so skinny, (sottile) I would slip through the ring on your finger!'
Here's Monsieur Maurel in 1907, six years after Verdi's death. He sing sit three times, being cheered on-and then once more, in French!
Here's more of that seduction. Silly Sir John has written the identical love letter to two ladies, Mrs. Ford and Mrs.Page.-the better to get more much needed pennies to finance his besotted lifestyle. The ladies get the joke and want revenge. Sir John ends up in a laundry basket thrown into the Thames
These clips are from the Metropolitan. Falstaff was first heard there with Victor Maurel, on February 4, 1895. W .J. Henderson in the New York Times:
Surely none left the auditorium without feeling that they had been in the presence of a masterwork, and one, too, little short of miraculous in its superb vitality, coming as it did, from the pen of a man who had passed the allotted three score and ten.
Falstaff has an adorable if naughty title character, the Merry Wives of Windsor, two young lovers, an angry husband and some creepy hangers-on. There's even kissing behind a screen, and a phony marriage in Windsor great park!
And all ends well. Verdi ends his operatic career with a magnificent fugue, as difficult to conduct as it is engaging to hear.Gone are the pyramids, and the hunchbacks, and the murderers and the tubercular heroines. Gone are the monarchs wanting to kill their sons and the sons wanting to sleep with their step mothers. What's left is 'Tutto nel mondo eburla"--All the world is a joke, wisdom is laughter:
The Columbus Symphony concludes the 2011-2012 Classical Series this weekend with music by French composers of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts, with Jennifer Rivera, mezzo-soprano and the Columbus Symphony Chorus.
The program on Saturday May 5 at 8 PM is broadcast live on Classical 101 FM and streamed on the web www.wosu.org/classical 101.
Pre-concert talks this Friday and Saturday at 7 pm. Just because you read this doesn't excuse you!
Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Faure: Pavane
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe, suite 2
Chausson: Poem of Love and the Sea
Durufle: Requiem
Much of this music is all about color-what do I mean 'all about color?' Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel were less concerned about the element of music most accessible: melody. There are tunes a- plenty, but these composers, and their contemporary Ernest Chausson, were coming of age in the era of the impressionist painters. Monet, Manet and especially Matisse used color to create what they wanted to see rather than what was literally before them. Oversimplification? Yes. But the texture and the light of many of these paintings mirrors(there's a word the impressionists loved) the sound collages you'll hear tonight.
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) followed Wagner in experimenting with tonality and rhythm. The downward chromatic figure that begins Prelude a l'apres midi d'une faune told the public in 1894 not to get too comfortable. The bar line rhythms of Mozart were giving way to an opaque texture filled with suggestion. You can hear the Faun scampering about on a hot summer afternoon, chasing nymphs-and this brief piece has an orchestral climax Wagner would have loved. Although this music flows, it doesn't 'land' where the ear expects. Debussy's music happens rather than being played.
Debussy and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) were too good for Serge Diaghilev to resit. The Russian born impresario of the Ballets Russes, with top hat, tails and rakish mustache, with his public and hedonistic affairs with Vaclav Nijinsky Michel Fokine and Leonard Massine WAS Parisian culture just before World War I. . Debussy and Ravel were well established world celebrities by 1912 but Diaghilev gave them the best kind of notoriety, the: success de scandale. The great Nijinsky choreographed and danced the faun to Debussy's music. The performance titillated, shocked and goaded the Parisian audiences with its heat and self-love.
Ravel didn't really want to work with Diaghilev. He knew that any success would be Diaghilev's and any failure would be Ravel's. Daphnis and Chloe was danced by the Ballets Russes in 1912. The idea came from choreographer Michel Fokine-and he caused Ravel lot of consternation:
" I must tell you I just had an insane week: preparation of a ballet libretto for the next Russian season. Almost every night, work until 3 a.m. What complicated things is that Fokine doesn't know a word of French, and I only know how to swear in Russian. In spite of the interpreters, you can imagine the savour of these meetings."
If the Greek legend of children raised by foster parents who fall in love and are separated and then reunited is a tad obvious, you can hear the Ravel provided music is anything but fey-indeed it has a lusciousness and sensuality primed for (splendid) dancers. Ravel's score long outlived the Ballet Russes. He later adapted Daphnis and Chloe intothree suites for orchestra,of which we'll hear Suite 2. There's a spectacular sunrise, pirate ships, an abduction and a steamy reunion. Daphis et Chloe is Ravel's longest and largest scaled work-but no miniaturist he. (Last time I heard this work the friend who joined me remarked, 'At last, a composer who can make love without slobbering!')
Ernest Chausson (1855-1899) died a fascinating death. He crashed his bicycle. This somewhat overshadows his life at the center of a Parisian salon attractive to Debussy, Faure, Albeniz, Turgenev and Monet. He was an attorney with a respectable profession and an attractive wife-and he had the Wagner bug as well, encouraged by Cesar Franck.
Who knows how Chausson would have developed had he lived longer? I'll bet he would have discovered jazz and gone running after Schoenberg and twelve-tone music..for a bit.
The Poeme de l'amour et de la mer for voice and orchestra took eight years to complete, 1882-1890. Chausson had already produced a terrific opera, Le roi d'Arthus and another 'Poeme' for violin and orchestra.
The Poem of Love and the Sea sets two poems by Maurice Bouchor-and the sea imagery is made for the play on light and the chimera of the impressionists
"The wind has changed, the skies are sullen/and no more shall we run and gather/the lilac in bloom and lovely roses/the springtime is sad and cannot bloom"
Chausson doesn't tell us if the voice is more important than the orchestra or vice versa? The fabric is pretty tight. The voice rises from the orchestra (as if from the seas?) This is music in which to wallow.
Very different is the sublime Requiem by Maurice Durufle Durufle (1902-1986). Just as sonority-how the orchestra sounded was paramount to Debussy, so generations later Durufle gave us an other sonority, based on Gregorian Chant.
Durufle became devoted to chant as practised at the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes. He came by this love naturally. for fifty-seven years, from 1929 until his death 1986, Maurice Durufle was organist at the Parisian church of Ste.-Etienne-du Mont. There he prepared the first performance of his Requiem, a lament for post-occupation France, in 1947. Durufle was one of the great church organists of Paris-a city where the king of instruments is taken very seriously to this day. Not for Durufle the eroticism of Debussy, Chausson and Ravel. As well crafted as those scores are, Durufle is restrained, careful, dignified and emphatic. You don't mess with Durufle.
What a program for our final Columbus Symphony concerts this season! The sensuality and heavy breathing, the colors of Debussy, Ravel and Chausson, and the piety mixed with gorgeousness of Durufle's Requiem. We'll hear our splendid Columbus Symphony chorus directed by Ronald Jenkins, and a fantastic mezzo-soprano, Jennifer Rivera. .Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts. What's not to love?
The Columbus Symphony presents 'The Satirist and the Philosopher', music by Mozart, Donald Harris and Richard Strauss, this weekend, 8 pm in the Ohio Theater. Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts.
I think we are generally wired to tonality, to musical consonance. Listen to the German romantics, Schumann and Brahms-go back to Mozart (live with Mozart.) The journey is sublime. The destination is almost predictable for those steeped in this music.
Donald Harris's music is different. The process-playing the notes-is the journey. Not only because his music-alas-is not better known and many of us are hearing it for the first time. Donald used the 12 tone method early in his career. Music depending on patterns and repetition, as does all Western music, becomes more challenging through dissonances and especially since we have no way to predict where this music is going.
NEWS FLASH: I just heard this symphony in rehearsal. It is a knockout and a wow.
Wagner got there first with Tristan und Isolde. (Gesualdo and Monteverdi were writing unpredictable music four hundred years earlier.) Wagner set the sex act to music in Tristan, (yes he did) and only at the end of a four hour opera is there a tragic and magnificent....arrival. Relief.
This weekend the Columbus Symphony presents the world premiere of Donald Harris' Second Symphony. Thus I haven't heard it and neither have you. He tells me the work can be astringent, but as a composer, Harris values creativity, and a 'spark' above all else. This is a composer who "caressed every note, and he felt liberated to compose freely in a style of his own choosing after an unremarkable start with Nadia Boulanger."
Donald Harris' Second Symphony has its world premiere this weekend. Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts the Columbus Symphony in the Ohio Theater.
The concert on Saturday April 14 is broadcast live on Classical 101 FM or www.wosu.org/classical101. 8 PM. Dr. Harris will be on hand for pre-concert talks and for intermission commentary. Meanwhile, here's the intro to a wonderful film about Donald Harris' many journeys as a composer. The centerpiece is an early work of his, the Piano Sonata 2, as performed by David Belivasky
Donald Harris is Emeritus Professor of Music at The Ohio State University. He lived in Paris form 1954 to 1968. On return to the States he taught and and served as an administrator at the New England Conservatory and the Hartt College of Music. He remains a vigorous composer, and a beloved teacher, mentor and friend.
The Harris symphony is part of a program called 'The Satirist and the Philosopher. Take your pick:
Mozart Overture to The Magic Flute Harris Symphony 2 (world premiere)
R. Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra
Here's conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni
The Strauss is best known today for its first ninety seconds, as used by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: Space Odyssey. Many of us of a certain age 'zoned out' to this opening fanfare back in the day. Did you? Do they still?
Also sprach Zarathustra was first performed on November 27,1896 in Frankfurt. Strauss conducted.
Richard Strauss was an early devotee of Wagner, to his father's chagrin. Papa Strauss was a horn player in the Munich court orchestra. He would make it a point to turn his chair around and present his back to the audience whenever Wagner was invited to conduct.
The younger Strauss was wise in his rebellion. He continued Wagner's adventuresome tonality and epic use of the orchestra in his tone poems. These are one movement orchestral works with a program. Wagner inspired the young Strauss to absorb Nietzche-the ideal of the Uebermensch and man's dependence on nothing but himself. Of his novel Thus Spake Zarathustra (Sarastro in Mozart's Magic Flute) Nietzche tells us
"Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of god and evil as the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause and end it itself, is his work. ..Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently he must also be the first to recognize it. His doctrine...posits truth as the highest virtue: this means the opposite of the idealist who flees from realty....The self-overcoming of morality, out of truth; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite--into me--that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth."
PHEW!
I always thought of Strauss as a rather placid man, writing his music and counting his money. Even Strauss admitted the impossibility of expressing philosophy in music, but he did provide us with a mighty tone poem, filled with drama and variety. It has its bombastic moments, but never at the expense of the invitation to savor and exult, if not exactly ponder.
P.S., As to who is the satirist and who the philosopher....guess. Or not.
