Strauss-ful

Richard Strauss’s Daphne is one of the operas he wrote during the excruciatingly long Indian summer of his composing life, where he seems, in one work after another, to be looking for a subject worthy of his skills, and only finding one in Capriccio, his last opera. For that, he and his ideal interpreter Clemens Krauss collaborated on a libretto that, while garrulous, has a real topic to deal with, and handles it with no portentousness or pseudo-depth. None of that can be said about the depressing series of operas he composed in the 1930s, which either have a serious topic to deal with but not the drama or the music to do it justice, or are nothing more than word- and note-spinning. Adequate librettists seem to be the rarest of all contributors to operatic history; on a generous count I can think of five.

Joseph Gregor, Strauss’s librettist for Daphne and its predecessor Friedenstag, emphatically is not one of their number. A scholar of drama, he was unable to originate any, and staggered from cliché to cliché. Strauss knew it, but carried on. Daphne, originally to have been part of a double bill, certainly drew the superior music from him, but it is still, compared with his lusty prime, insipid stuff. That might not be surprising, given that it is a pastoral and that its heroine achieves happiness by turning into a tree, thus avoiding repulsive contact with human beings, and even a god in disguise. You can say that it’s good to be at one with nature, but having people pick your leaves could be felt as taking it too far.