Strauss, the Pervert, and Avant Garde Opera of the Fin de Siecle

Bibliographic Data

ID4833299
AuthorsSander L Gilman (0000-0002-4630-390X, corresponding author)
Year1988
Issue43
Pages35
Publication date1988-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew German Critique (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-033X • E-ISSN: 1558-1462
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/488397
OpenAlexW2325035097
LanguageEN
Citations received5

I wish to ask a series of questions about the social context of an opera libretto, about an author's intention in selecting a theme for an opera, about the cultural significance of selecting any given text to be set to music. My object will be one of the most popular operas of the twentieth century, Richard Strauss's Salome, first performed in the Dresden Opera on December 9, 1905. My contention is that in selecting a libretto, composers take into consideration much more than aesthetic appropriateness. They are aware of the cultural implications, including images of disease, and of the force that cultural presuppositions will have in shaping the audience and drawing it both into the work, as well as, perhaps even more important, into the theater. With Richard Strauss the problem of the libretto seems on first glance rather trivial, for did he not simply, to quote his own words, purge the piece [i.e., Oscar Wilde's French drama of 1892] of purple passages to such an extent that it became quite a good libretto.' Would it not, therefore, be sufficient to read the play, to understand the drama's admittedly complex genesis, in order to comprehend Strauss's libretto? I hope to make

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Context (archaeology) · Drama · Epistemology · Literature · Object (grammar) · Opera · Order (exchange) · Presupposition · Theme (computing) · Decadence, Literature, and Society · History · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy · Theater, Performance, and Music History

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub