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Death as a Young Man
| Article
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19285 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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6 / 1991 |
1,004 Words |
| Author
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Lawrence O'Toole
Lawrence O'Toole writes for Entertainment Weekly and other
national publications. |
Of all composers who have worked primarily in the twentieth century, no others' music, not even Stravinsky's, lends itself to dance as much as that of Richard Strauss. His command of melody, rhythm, and orchestral color in opera, from works as distinctly different as Salome and Der Rosenkavalier, shows a creative mind extremely sympathetic to dance. And yet Strauss' music has always been grossly underemployed in this area.
It is difficult to believe that no one, for example, has been moved to create a ballet out of Der Rosenkavalier, its glittering Viennese setting, and the seemingly endless variations on waltz themes. (One of the most memorable moments in a lifetime of opera-going was the evening last year when Carlo Kleiber conducted the piece at the Metropolitan Opera as heads, completely seduced by the waltz sequence, swayed back and forth throughout the ordinarily sedate hall.) Imagine how utterly dreamy the "Presentation of the Rose" done as a pas de deux could be. For that matter, one experiences no trouble whatsoever thinking of Ariadne auf Naxos in terms of ballet.
Pure Movement
Until some genius comes along who is able to think of Strauss--and let's not forget the lieder and tone poems--in terms of pure movement, the world will have to remain satisfied with very little. Strauss did, however, compose three full-length works for the ballet: Josephs Legende (1914), Schlagobers (1924) and Divertimento after Couperin (1940-41).
The first has quite a pedigree: It was premiered by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes under the direction of the composer at the Paris Opera. It has been fairly consistently performed since its premiere and has attracted such choreographers as Anthony Tudor (for Buenos Aires' Teatro Colon in 1958) and Roland Petit (Vienna, 1976). The current performing version, by John Neumeier, premiered in Vienna the following year and was revived, along with Dutch choreographer Rudi van Dantzig's Four Last Songs, in 1990. Both will be presented again this year on June 5, 9, and 13 at the Vienna Staatsoper.
Strauss' ballet, with a book by Harry Graf Kessler and Strauss' favored librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, followed the biblical story of Joseph almost slavishly. Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt, becoming part of Potiphar's household. Potiphar's hot-blooded wife, stunned by Joseph's manly beauty, tries with all her might to seduce him. Unable to accomplish this, she invents a fiction, causing Jacob's eleventh son to
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