Deborah Voigt

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Friedenstag is at once Richard Strauss’ (1864-1949) last operatic collaboration with his librettist Stefan Zweig and his first with Joseph Gregor. The themes of the opera – set in the mid 17th century are about the highest humanitarian and liberal ideals – themes Zweig devised from the factual events from the Thirty Years War.

The challenge that faced Strauss and Gregor was how to express this message in the Third Reich, where such well intentioned themes could be hijacked by the Nazis as reflecting the regimes ideal and proclaiming it ‘the first Nazi opera’. Zweig by the time this work was composed had fled Germany, but remained on cordial terms with Strauss, and it has been argued that of all their operatic collaborations this is the one where Zweig’s lofty ideals are most obvious. However, a combination of Strauss’s music which descends to an empty jingoistic martial style in places, and the abandonment of Zweig’s words on reconciliation in place of a long chorus of rejoicing and triumphalism – music to Goebel’s ears no doubt. The work stands apart from the canon of Strauss’s operas, and has only a tenuous hold on the repertoire – an example of lofty ideals sacrificed on the alter of political expediency. Gregor steered the composer towards less controversial operatic themes such as Daphne.

Rare repertoire

‘Sinopoli's recording has magnificent, committed and full-throated choral singing, and this makes the final scene sound as Fidelio-like as Strauss undoubtedly wished. Albert Dohmen, who has sung Wotan but here sounds at times more like Alberich, is a powerful Commandant.’ Gramophone, December 2001

'Sinopoli and the [engineers] have gone even further (than Barenboim/Teldec) in exposing the panoply of sound Strauss conjured from his vast orchestra in the most vivid sound yet…you will certainly find much here to thrill mind and heart.' Gramophone 1997

Elektra was the first of the collaborative fruits of Strauss and his long-term librettist Hugo von Hoffmanstahl. The work was premiered in Dresden in 1909, and the libretto caused much consternation among critics and public alike, being called immoral and perverse. However, the critics evidently didn’t know their Sophocles well, for Hoffmanstahl had adhered closely to the original – which he knew well in the original Greek. Although it was their first collaboration, Strauss had reservations about setting the libretto – not for any reasons to do with the criticism it drew after the premier, but due to the fact that Elektra has close parallels with Salome. Both works have scores requiring vast orchestral forces, and Elektra pushes tonality to breaking point.

The tension created by Strauss is almost unbearable at times. That said, Elektra is a less daring score than Salome, and the composer had begun to row back from the edge of tonality and the world that Schoenberg would shortly inhabit. This journey back from the fringes of tonality would triumph with the gloriously sumptuous Der Rosenkavalier.

Der fliegende HollÄnder is Wagner’s first mature opera and marks the start of his music dramas which would culminate in his last opera, Parsifal. The opera tells the legend of the Flying Dutchman — the wandering Jew of the seas, who can only find release from his constant travels until Judgement Day if he finds a woman who will love him faithfully until death. The famous overture sets the scene and contains all the famous musical motifs found in the opera.

Considering that Ives lived to be 80 years old the period during which he was most active as one of the most innovative of American composers was remarkably short. His earliest works date from the mid-1890s and by 1930 he was virtually silent.

This late inactivity was possibly engendered by the fact that his works were largely ignored during his lifetime and it wasn't until the mid-1960s that his music gained any kind of recognition. By then he had been dead for ten years.

This is the second Ives disc in this series and the programme here comprises some of Ives's instrumental and vocal music.