Robert Gore-Langton talks to Ronald Harwood about musical life in Nazi Germany
Nazis in the theatre liven things up no end. They provide the hilarity in The Producers, the creepiness in Cabaret. And when you can’t take any more bright copper kettles or warm woollen mittens in The Sound of Music on comes the SS, arguably the best moment in the show. Now there’s a new play about music in Nazi Germany, a sobering reminder of just how seriously the Third Reich took its music and music-makers. Collaboration is about Richard Strauss and his relationship with the Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, who together wrote an opera in the 1930s while the storm was gathering over Europe. The play is by the Oscar-winning screenwriter and playwright Ronald Harwood and is at Chichester Festival Theatre in a companion piece with Taking Sides, his 1995 hit about the post-war American ‘denazification’ trial of the famous conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who was eventually cleared of having served the Nazi regime.
The elderly Strauss — a national figure — was certainly a very big catch for Hitler. These days musical plebs (like me) tend to think of Strauss not as the composer of Der Rosenkavalier and Salome, but as the guy who did the intro music to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Elvis used the same music — from ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ — during his Las Vegas period.
Strauss died in 1949, his reputation tarnished by having written cheap swastika music for the regime. The other character in the play is Stefan Zweig (to be played by the superb David Horovitch), who was a best-selling author in the Thirties and one of Europe’s most deeply cultured intellectuals. He got out of Austria in time, fled to England, briefly lived on Lyncombe Hill in Bath, before finally ending up in Brazil where he and his young wife, homesick and utterly despairing, jointly committed suicide in 1942.
More articles from: Robert Gore-Langton | this section
Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
Advertisement
It all started earlier this year, when my friend Chris managed to get four tickets for the first Leonard Cohen concerts at the O2.
The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions
Metropolitan Museum, until 1 February 2009
Qatar’s Museum of Islamic Art
Oleg Vassiliev: Recent Works
Faggionato Fine Arts, 49 Albemarle Street, London W1, until 23 January 2009
Saul Steinberg: Illuminations
Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 15 February 2009
Cartoons & Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster
The Wallace Collection, until 11 January 2009
Lakeview Terrace
15, Nationwide
Summer
15, Key Cities
The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945, by Richard L. Evans
The TV programmes you watched as a child are like acid flashbacks.
I really, really wish I could change places this week and become a TV critic.
Boris Godunov
English National Opera
La rencontre imprévue
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Subscribe to Sky from £16 a month. Get free equipment and free broadband - Join Now. Sky HD - be amongst the first to have it - order now.
Subscribe to Sky from £16 a month. Get free equipment and free broadband - Join Now. Sky HD - be...
PORTA METRONIA, ROME Standing high on the top of one of the seven hills of Rome- the Coelian- this unique
ROME and PARIS: over 350 holiday rentals apartments listed: visit www.romanreference.com and www.parisreference.com or call +39 0648 903612.
Goldsmiths by Design Welcome to Ruffs! You have found a company of Goldsmiths that specialises in the manufacture, amongst other
Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine
Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms
Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP
All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved
Michele
July 25th, 2008 10:43amDa Ponte didn't write the libretto for the Magic Flute, it was Schickaneder.
Cecilia Rabà
July 25th, 2008 12:27pmI advise yourselves the book of the Italian musicologist Quirino Principe "Richard Strauss-La musica nello specchio di Eros", Bompiani, Milan.