Sunday Classics preview: That Richard Strauss sure knew how to bring a curtain down!

The end of Act I of Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow) with Georg Solti conducting at the 1992 Salzburg Festival, with Robert Hale as Barak the Dyer, Eva Marton as his wife, and Gerhard Eder, Karl Nebenführ, and Wolfgang Scheider as the voices of the Watchmen

by Ken

We can't get too deeply involved for now in the deeply involved plot of composer Richard Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow). What we're focusing on tonight is the end of Act I, which takes place at bedtime in the troubled household of the kindly dyer (or "Färber") Barak and his wife (who like all the other characters except her husband has no actual name, but is known simply as the Dyer's Wife, or "Färber").

The Dyer, on arriving home from schlepping his skins to the market, has found some alarming alterations in the sleeping arrangements of his hovel. His pallet has been separated from the bed of his wife, who informs him that this is the way it will be from now on, and also they will be joined by her supposed cousin. (We the audience know that that's not who the woman really is, but, as I say, let's get into that just now.)

[Readers with long memories will recall that we've already heard this music, in a post called "Glimpses of the musical depths of Richard Strauss."]

R. STRAUSS: Die Frau ohne Schatten, Op. 65: chorale of
the Watchmen, "Ihr Gatten in den Häusern dieser Stadt"
("You spouses in the houses of this city")

The music I want you to hear in the first clip is the unison chorale sung by three unseen Watchmen or Guardians, watching in the streets of this mysterious metropolis in the South Pacific. Technically, then, you should stop the clip at about the 1:16 mark. Even though in a moment we're going to hear a slightly fuller version of this excerpt, which is intended to play through the brief remainder end of the act, I was damned if I was going to edit out the rest, since this comprises, all in all, quite possibly the most beautiful music I've ever heard, in, all in all, the single most beautiful performance I've ever heard of Frau. This very long and staggeringly complex opera has long held a special place in the heart of conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch, and the EMI recording, while predictably well short of ideal, is a pretty stunning accomplishment.

VOICES OF THE THREE WATCHMEN [in the streets]:
You spouses in the houses of this city,
love one another more than your life,
and know: Not for the sake of your life
is the seed of life entrusted to you,
but solely for the sake of your love.

[For the text of the rest of the act, see below.]

Andreas Schmidt (b), Jan-Hendrik Rootering (bs), and Kurt Rydl (bs), Watchmen; Alfred Muff (bs-b), Barak; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. EMI, recorded 1987

Now we're going to back up just a bit, to Barak's reaction to the news and then run officially to the end of the act, and a curtain of staggering beauty, so much so that I would probably have to rate it the second most beautiful musical curtain I know. (Sunday we're going to back up a bit farther, to Barak's return home and how he gets the news, but we're also going to try to listen in on how this all appears to his long-suffering wife.) Georg Solti, by the way, also loved Frau, and I would hate to be without either his video or his audio recording. The latter, an immensely complicated project that took two years to complete, is more uneven than Sawallisch's audio recording but at its best -- like this excerpt -- is even more intense.

R. STRAUSS: Die Frau ohne Schatten, Op. 65: conclusion of Act I, from Barak, "Sie haben es mir gesagt" ("They told me")

BARAK [as he, resigned, pulls a piece of bread out of his pocket, and eating it sits on the ground]: They told me
that her spirit would be strange
and her deeds unkind
in the early time.
But I bear it hard,
and have lost my taste for a meal.
VOICES OF THE THREE WATCHMEN [in the streets]:
You spouses in the houses of this city,
love one another more than your life,
and know: Not for the sake of your life
is the seed of life entrusted to you,
but solely for the sake of your love.
BARAK [as he turns]: Do you hear the Watchmen, child, and their call?
[No answer]
WATCHMEN: You spouses who lie loving in your arms,
you are the bridge spanning the chasm,
on which the dead continue on in life!
Blessed be your love's work!
BARAK [listening again, turned toward the rear, in vain; he sighs deeply and stretches out to sleep]: So be it.
[End of Act I]

José van Dam (bs-b), Barak; Wolfgang Scheider (bs), Gerhard Eder (bs), and Karl Nebenführ (bs), Watchmen; Vienna Philharmonic, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1989


AND TO HELP GET US IN A
FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN MOOD --

Here's the composer's own 1946 Symphonic Fantasy from "Die Frau ohne Schatten".

Berlin Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. Sony, recorded Nov. 11, 1990

And seeing as I already made the audio clip, here from the same Strauss CD is Maestro Mehta's performance of music we've also heard before, in the above-noted Strauss post: the composer's 1944 Waltz Suite from "Der Rosenkavalier," Acts I and II. (Rosenkavalier was, of course, the first opera for which Hofmannsthal produced an original libretto for Strauss, Elektra having been adapted from his adaptation of the Sophocles play.)

Berlin Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. Sony, recorded Feb. 12, 1990


IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S PREVIEW --

On the way to taking Sunday's promised closer listen to the broken relationship of Barak and his wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten, we backtrack to catch up with the operatic act-ender I'm rating as the most beautiful curtain-lowerer.

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