Page 377 - Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2019. Vloga nacionalnih opernih gledališč v 20. in 21. stoletju - The Role of National Opera Houses in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 3
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the european musical context of the oper as of slavko osterc
ner’s literary German, which was intended to give it a universal appeal. As a
way of distancing the drama from the audience and illuminating the mean-
ing of the Latin, the separate numbers were spaced out by the insertion of
narrative explanations, which were written in French by Jean Cocteau, but
to be given in the vernacular of the country in which it was performed, a
feature that gives the work a formal and monumental character. In another
opera, Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, the myth about the fate of Ariadne af-
ter the killing of the Minotaur in the Palace of Minos at Knossos in Crete
was assembled by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. In this case, however, the op-
era’s plot was complicated by the overlaid story of Harlequin and his lovers,
a good example of a humorous viewpoint on the Greek myth. This story
(minus Hofmannsthal’s additions) also appears in the opera Ariane et Bar-
be-bleu by Paul Dukas. The story of Theseus who had abandoned Ariadne
was again addressed by Milhaud in his minute operas L’abandon d’Ariane
(‘The Abandonment of Ariadne’) and La délivrance de Thésée (‘The Deliv-
erance of Theseus’). The Classical Greek comedy Birds by the Athenian play-
wright Aristophanes shows a very strong anti-romantic subject in its fanta-
sy about the bird kingdom being persuaded by two disgruntled human beings
to create their own city completely separated from the kingdom of the Gods
and the world of humans. The opera Die Vögel (‘The Birds’) of 1919 by the Ger-
man Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) is loosely based on the Greek original and is
a skilful combination of fantasy and classicism. We can perhaps see this as a
reaction to Wagnerian romanticism in its humour, although the musical idi-
om is clearly that of the 19th century, with its strong tonal focus. The comic el-
ement is particularly noticeable in the word setting for the birds which gave
the composer an opportunity for bird-like singing, for example, in the melod-
ic lines of the Nightingale in the prologue.9 On the other hand the example of
Wagner’s Siegfried talking with the birds is an obvious precedent that must
surely link Braunfels with the previous century. Unlike in the Wagner, how-
ever, Braunfels’s character Hoffegut understands everything that is being sung
by the Nightingale without first having to draw blood with Nothung, the mag-
ic sword.
Other operas had exotic, psychological and mysterious dimensions. In
the pre-First World War years the operas of Debussy, Zemlinsky, Schreker,
Richard Strauss, Arnold Schönberg, Janáček and Bartók were very signifi-
cant in this direction. The mystery of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is very
much part of the symbolist culture of understatement and subtle implica-
9 Walter Braunfels, Die Vögel, klavierauszug (Vienna: Universal, 1920), 6–10.
375
ner’s literary German, which was intended to give it a universal appeal. As a
way of distancing the drama from the audience and illuminating the mean-
ing of the Latin, the separate numbers were spaced out by the insertion of
narrative explanations, which were written in French by Jean Cocteau, but
to be given in the vernacular of the country in which it was performed, a
feature that gives the work a formal and monumental character. In another
opera, Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, the myth about the fate of Ariadne af-
ter the killing of the Minotaur in the Palace of Minos at Knossos in Crete
was assembled by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. In this case, however, the op-
era’s plot was complicated by the overlaid story of Harlequin and his lovers,
a good example of a humorous viewpoint on the Greek myth. This story
(minus Hofmannsthal’s additions) also appears in the opera Ariane et Bar-
be-bleu by Paul Dukas. The story of Theseus who had abandoned Ariadne
was again addressed by Milhaud in his minute operas L’abandon d’Ariane
(‘The Abandonment of Ariadne’) and La délivrance de Thésée (‘The Deliv-
erance of Theseus’). The Classical Greek comedy Birds by the Athenian play-
wright Aristophanes shows a very strong anti-romantic subject in its fanta-
sy about the bird kingdom being persuaded by two disgruntled human beings
to create their own city completely separated from the kingdom of the Gods
and the world of humans. The opera Die Vögel (‘The Birds’) of 1919 by the Ger-
man Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) is loosely based on the Greek original and is
a skilful combination of fantasy and classicism. We can perhaps see this as a
reaction to Wagnerian romanticism in its humour, although the musical idi-
om is clearly that of the 19th century, with its strong tonal focus. The comic el-
ement is particularly noticeable in the word setting for the birds which gave
the composer an opportunity for bird-like singing, for example, in the melod-
ic lines of the Nightingale in the prologue.9 On the other hand the example of
Wagner’s Siegfried talking with the birds is an obvious precedent that must
surely link Braunfels with the previous century. Unlike in the Wagner, how-
ever, Braunfels’s character Hoffegut understands everything that is being sung
by the Nightingale without first having to draw blood with Nothung, the mag-
ic sword.
Other operas had exotic, psychological and mysterious dimensions. In
the pre-First World War years the operas of Debussy, Zemlinsky, Schreker,
Richard Strauss, Arnold Schönberg, Janáček and Bartók were very signifi-
cant in this direction. The mystery of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is very
much part of the symbolist culture of understatement and subtle implica-
9 Walter Braunfels, Die Vögel, klavierauszug (Vienna: Universal, 1920), 6–10.
375
