Richard Strauss, composer of Salome (1905) and different nice operas, was so well-known in his personal lifetime (1864-1949) newspaper cartoonists have been continually making enjoyable of him. Biographers together with Kurt Wilhelm and Tim Ashley collected plenty of these; listed here are a couple of examples.
The person himself was tall and
lean, with a frizz of curly hair and all the time a sublime mustache. Composing was
his side-hustle; his main job was conducting. These studio pictures present
the dramatic gestures typical of Maestro Strauss within the Eighteen Nineties; afterward he
turned legendary for a restrained and undemonstrative podium type. Strauss
himself scribbled the notes on these pictures, which he despatched to his good friend
Engelbert Humperdinck (composer of Hansel und Gretel; at its 1893 world
premiere Strauss performed Pauline de Ahna, who later turned Strauss’s spouse, as
Hansel). Within the fourth photograph Strauss conducts Humperdinck’s “Hexenritt,” the
Witch’s Journey, a Journey-of-the-Valkyries-esque interlude between Hansel und
Gretel Scenes 1 and a couple of. On the third photograph, conducting Meyerbeer’s Robert
le diable, the dry-witted Strauss has written “enthusiasm at its highest
peak.”
“Wie ein Strauß-Porträt
entsteht:
Erst ‘ne Birne, Dann ‘ne Stirne,
Haare kraus—Richard Strauß.”
(“How to attract Richard Strauss: first a pear, then a brow, curly hair—Richard
Strauss.” However in German, the rhymes are actually cute.) This font, often known as Fraktur,
was standard in Germany up by way of World Conflict 2. Strauss himself by no means spelled
his title with an esset, ß, which may change two adjoining ‘s’ characters. However
he later wrote an opera, Intermezzo, whose plot considerations somebody
misspelling a composer’s title!)
This 1894 cartoon casts Strauss
within the function of the self-exiled hero Guntram, protagonist of his (unsuccessful)
first opera. Pauline, who sang its soprano function, is caricatured right here because the
Muse main away the banished artist’s chariot. Guntram appeared
spinoff of Wagner’s operas, and this cartoon with its weeping cherubim actually
resembles the various cartoons from that period spoofing Wagner and his operas.
A decade later, a cartoonist
with a extra twentieth-century type has drawn Oscar Wilde and Strauss unveiling
the dancing Salome.
“On the Opera: The Dance of
Salome.” A reminder that at Salome’s 1905 world premiere, the voyeurism
and scantily-clad erotic dancing was provocative, even earlier than you get to the
nymphomaniac necrophilia.
“The brand new orchestra of Richard
Strauss,” 1906 cartoon by Arpad Schmidhammer, exhibits Strauss conducting atop a
giant group of music-makers. (Our orchestra for Salome will truly
solely characteristic about 80 gamers. And sorry—no elephants.)
As in Strauss’s tone-poem “Ein
Heldenleben” (A Hero’s Life). the heroic composer right here ignores the carpings of
his critics and detractors.
“Live performance at Court docket. / The
Marshall calls a lackey over to him and whispers: ‘His Majesty has observed an
obvious lunatic among the many musicians. See that he’s eliminated instantly.’ A
jiffy later the lackey says to the Marshall, ‘Excellency, your orders… /
…have been carried out!’”
When Salome was (lastly)
offered in Vienna, a cartoonist attracts the princess considering a “Strauss
ham” head on a silver platter, with a sausage-link font: one thing of an
commercial for pork merchandise.
Salome had additionally been
banned in London, going again to Oscar Wilde’s 1893 play. In line with this
British cartoonist in 1910, “The censor having forbidden the Baptist’s head,
Mme. Akté danced spherical a plum pudding. This delicate regard for nationwide
sensibilities contributed in no small measure to the success of the
efficiency.”
J. P. Morgan was answerable for
Salome being banned (after one efficiency solely, in 1907) from New
York’s Metropolitan Opera. One New York cartoonist appears to be suggesting the
Met curry favor with the tycoons by working commercials on Salome’s seven
veils: one for Rockefeller Oil, one for “Pierpont Morgan’s Trusts,” one other for
“Vanderbilt’s Railroad”.
Strauss and his Salome firm boarding an early
twentieth century practice. The conductor/composer was in actuality continually
taking trains throughout Europe. Backwards and forwards he traveled, to his music
director jobs in Berlin and Vienna, to Dresden (the place he favored to premiere his
operas), to his hometown of Munich and his residence in Garmisch-Patenkirchen
within the Bavarian Alps.
The
phrase “Strauss” means “bouquet” or “garland” in German. However cartoonists made
a lot of the truth that it additionally refers to an “ostrich.”
A 1911 cartoon has Strauss
attending the premiere of Der Rosenkavalier together with his girlfriends Salome
and Elektra.
Elektra and Der
Rosenkavalier have been the primary two collaborations between Strauss and the
Viennese author Hugo von Hofmannsthal, right here depicted in silhouette in
1914—most likely engaged on Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, and/or
their ballet Josephslegende. Later Hofmannsthal would additionally write Strauss
librettos for the operas Die Ägyptische Helena and Arabella.
A cartoonist’s impression of
what Hofmannsthal and Strauss did to the traditional Greek tragedian Sophocles when
they created their opera on Elektra in 1909.
A premiere of a brand new Strauss
opera was an enormous deal. Music-lovers from throughout Europe would journey to
wherever these thrilling new works may very well be heard. Right here’s a train-compartment
filled with opera-lovers rigorously finding out the orchestral rating of Der
Rosenkavalier as if it have been a brand new Harry Potter guide.
A Strauss-Ostrich, misquoting
the nymphs’ trio from the ultimate scene, lays an egg labeled Ariadne auf Naxos;
Zerbinetta is hatching. Why this cartoon is labeled “Noise-Contest” is anybody’s
guess; Ariadne requires a tiny (for Strauss) orchestra.
“Gib mir den Kopf des Richard
Strauss!” Franz Mikorey works on a bust of the elder Strauss; the sculptor’s
uncle had sung the function of Guntram again in 1895.
Strauss caricatured by Olaf Gulbransson for Munich’s Simplicissimus journal.
