ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Radio: Strauss Opera That Had Stormy Start

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30480, 30 June 1964, Page 10

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Radio: Strauss Opera That Had Stormy Start

With sensuous and erotic music that perfectly matched Oscar Wilde’s lurid play, the opera by Richard Strauss, created a sensation and stirred vigorous protests on moral and religious grounds in the early 1900’s. In Vienna, the planned premiere had to be cancelled when the censors stepped in. The premiere was held in Dresden. In Berlin, the Kaiser at first forbade its performance; when it was allowed it was described as “repulsive” and “perverse.” In London, the planned premiere was cancelled by the Lord Chamberlain.

In New York, the premiere brought protests from the public,' press and clergy and the directors of the Met decided not to risk a second performance. It was kept out of Boston. Time has cushioned the shock a little. “Salome” has found a place in the repertory of many houses, it has been recorded for the gramophone twice and there has even been a television production. Andrew Porter, writing in the “Financial Times,” said the two London productions in 1959, though conducted with finesse and beauty, were staged, sung and acted as to make the effect of a faded sex-shocker, striving vainly, even revoltingly, to stimulate. But the only production in London since then, by the Frankfurt Opera last November, was the finest of the opera he had seen. “It held one spellbound

from first bar to last: not in vulgar excitement, but aglow with admiration for and profound pleasure ip Strauss’s genius. It was conducted as if it was the greatest of the tone poems; and in a strange way the prodiiction was not an over-ripe and rotten Wilde play, but Strauss’s score. Throughout the opera the moves, gestures and expressions seemed to be emanations of the music: not a play at once acted out and decorated with exciting sounds, but a dramatic score with the characters and their developments and inter-relationships at once musically and visually defined.

“For the greatness of ‘Salome’ is Strauss’s. Like the earlier tone poems, and the later ‘Electra,’ it shows what a different composer he might have been had the librettist, Hofmannsthal—‘the well-bred, worldly-wise duenna’ set about making a conservative of him.” This Month’s Opera As the 100th anniversary of Strauss’s birth occurred this year—on June 11— special attention is being given to his works by the N.Z.B.C. On Sunday at 8 p.m. this month’s opera from 3YC will be “Salome” with Birgit Nilsson (soprano) as Salome; Gerhard Stoize (tenor) as Herod, Tetrarch of Judea; Grace Hoffman (mezzo-soprano) as herodias; Eberhard Waechter (baritone) as Jochanaan (John the Baptist); Waldemar Kmennt (tenor) as Narraboth; with George Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. ■

Another Strauss programme this week can be heard from 3YC on Thursday at 9 p.m. the works are the ‘Cello Sonata in F and the symphonic poem. “Thus Spake Zarathusa.” Janacek Opera Some operas lose much by being heard over the air.

Janacek’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” is not one of them. You need not even know the subjecct to recognise in the opening four bars .a forest, murmuring with ■ life, insects dancing in its warm haze. This is the setting in which Janacek tells the story of how the little vixen was caught, escaped, took a fox to husband, and at last was shot by a poacher she was teasing. When Janacek wrote the opera at his house on the edge ’of the woods near his native Hukvaidy. He jotted in his notebooks, as was his habit, not only the musical curves of everyday talk about him, but the exact pitch and rhythm of animal’s cries. When the vixen kills the strutting farmyard cock. Janacek turns a scribbled note of a hen’s cackle into a complete musical scene. The final score is the rich expression of literal sounds. Excerps from a new English version of the opera presented by the Sadler’s Wells Theatre conducted by Colin Davis will be broadcast from 3YC at 8.35 p.m. on Monday. New Lieder Singer The 34-year-old German baritone. Hermann Prey,, who has made a name for himself as an opera singer, is now devoting more of his time to lieder recitals and is competing in the recording field with the more experienced 38-year-old Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Prey’s recording of the “Abschied,” from the posthumous Schubert song-cycle “Schwanengesang” will be played by Brian Salkeld in “Introducing New Records” from the YAs at 4 p.m. on Sunday. The programme also includes the highly evocative music of the Festival of- the Shepherds, the opening scene of Rossini’s opera “William Tell,” and Yaltah Menuhin and her husband Joel Rice playing Beethoven’s Grand March in C for two pianists.