Alina Dragnea
Politics and opera/Opera as politics

 

Politics and opera have found themselves on the same path since the dawn of this new musical concept that was starting to make history.

The world in which this art form started taking shape was already a spectacular labyrinth of political intrigues and controversial schemes, that would not leave such an interesting, new, and useful advertising vehicle unaddressed.

Starting from the Renaissance, under the powerful patronage of influential houses such as the Medici family, passing through the age of Enlightenment, up until the late 19th century and even continuing to the modern day, influenced by various ideologies and currents, opera has expressed and carried within itself significant political perspectives and national interests, honouring and criticizing with greater or lesser subtlety, the political regimes developed in the course of time.

Hidden through the harmonies and the musical motifs, expressed through the use of symbols, mythology, protagonism versus antagonism, exploiting the power of association or even presenting complex realities in plain sight or pointed out between the story lines, new doctrines, dogmas, and theories came into view in a unique way, exposed more broadly, while still disguised in the genuine aspirations of the high art that opera is.

The 20th century's devastating impact on the world has shaken the paradigm of reason over the reality, the fundamental values and judgements, and the very understanding of the many facets and aspects of the human nature, leaving a major mark on the German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist, Richard Strauss.

Strauss, viewed as a leading figure of the late romantic and early modern eras and regarded as a successor or spiritual and intellectual heir of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt's legacies, has found himself in a huge uproar of circumstances inflicted on him by the political powers of the 20th century.

Contrary to the doctrines of the National Socialists, Strauss was a huge advocate of the sheer talent and ingenious inclinations of an artist, regardless of the ethnicity of the person, as he noted in a letter meant for the Austrian novelist and playwright of Jewish descent Stefan Zweig:

"I recognize only two types of people: those who have talent and those who have none." (1935, Excerpt from Strauss's letter to Stefan Zweig)

In spite of not being quite attuned with the political prospects expected from him, but as a response to his genius and international recognition, he received an offer he couldn’t refuse for two major and particularly relevant positions in the musical environment of the National Socialist Germany.

He was appointed head of the Reichskammermusik and principal conductor of the Bayreuth Festival, two powerful diplomatic positions, which he accepted, despite being in quite different places internally and spiritually. He had hoped that he could use these brilliant political instruments to preserve performances of works written by banned composers such as Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn, to develop copyright protection for composers, and to maintain German music at the highest level.

His plan to pursue all of these actions with an underlying intention not to adhere to the concepts and ideologies of the national socialist authorities, proved in the end to be essentially untenable.

Accepting these positions attracted criticism for his apparent collaboration with the authorities and later laid unique burdens upon his shoulders. Some prospects of intellectual excitement urged him to insist on collaborating with the librettist Stefan Zweig for his opera "Die Schweigsame Frau", a decision that eventually led to his firing from both Reichskammermusik and Bayreuth.

Later on, probably to express a desire for genuine liberation or just to send a dignified symbolic message, he premiered the opera "Friedenstag" just before the outbreak of the Second World War, particularly distinguished for linking direct criticism to the empowered party.

"Ariadne auf Naxos" is part of a series of critically acclaimed operas that Strauss had created in collaboration with the dramatist, novelist and poet, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, with great successes such as "Elektra", "Der Rosenkavalier" and "Arabella", just to name a few.

For a start, the opera was considered rather unimpressive, the first version from 1912 raising a few eyebrows, given the less typical blend of an extensive theatrical play and a short opera. However, “Ariadne auf Naxos” was later praised as being just as innovative and advanced as the more celebrated "Der Rosenkavalier" or any of Stauss’ other acclaimed operas.

The conjunction of opera buffa and opera seria, as well as the expansion of the recitativo secco, emerged into an alternative, conversational melodic style presented in "Ariadne auf Naxos" which first started to take shape in the internal structure of "Der Rosenkavalier" and is probably a continuation of the style.

With a compressed and edited Vorspiel, the revised version of "Ariadne auf Naxos" was first performed in 1916. It endured its initial exposure to the world in the midst of what was known at the time as "The Great War" or "The war to end all wars", most commonly known in modern days as "The First World War", a time when Hofmannsthal held a position in the government, endorsing the war effort and underlining the cultural tradition of Austria.

The most surprising aspect of "Ariadne auf Naxos" is that, given the unmasterable trauma of the war and the political entanglements occurring at that time, Strauss and Hofmannsthal had chosen to create an opera that was placed far away from the daily, active, ongoing tense situations.

The employment of the imaginative, resourceful mythology mixed with "Commedia dell'arte" occurrences in the work, may, perhaps, suggest a sobering realisation of Strauss's desire to run away from the atrocities of war and to completely separate the rigid, dystopic reality and the utopic fantasy of the opera into two separate spheres.

Therefore, one may be led to believe that the lack of Strauss's reactions or comments, in the opera, regarding the very subject of the war, may have been his actual equivocal statement addressed to it. This relatively solitary account of the absence of a reaction may have predicted his endeavours, concepts and spiritual callings in the aftermath of the First World War, the events of the Second World War and the remainder of his life.