View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (May 1999, week 4) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 00:18:10 +0000 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: The donkey's shadow, St Paul's, Covent Garden, 24May99 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Struthion Andrew Shore Antrax Marc Le Brocq Krobyle Valerie Reid Gorgo Mary Nelson Philippides Richard Suart Physignatus Stephen Brown Polyphonus Leandros Taliotis Kenteterion Jeremy White Conductor Ernst Kovacic Members of ENO orchestra/Royal College of Music "Scripted and narrated by Sir Peter Ustinov" There is something about German intellectuals and donkeys. In Also sprach Zarathustra, Zarathrustra finds and mocks a group of wise men worshipping a donkey in a cave. Bruno Snell (perhaps with this in mind) in 1932 took a witty and corageous swipe at the plebiscite in which the German people said yes to Hitler. He noted that Greek donkeys said "no" ("ou", a nasalised back vowel which turns out exactly like the "aw" of ee-aw) whereas German donkeys only say Ja. Christoph Martin Wieland's 1780 novel, the source of Hans Adler's libretto for Richard Strauss' last opera, is a Swiftian riff on the proverb "from the shadow of a donkey". The donkey's owner and the quack dentist who has hired the animal go to court about who owns the shadow. The city of Abdera divides in two on the question, to the edge of civil war, and the donkey dies of starvation. It's full of virulent satire about greedy lawyers, pompous priests and politicians and corruption in general. I'm not sure what to make of Strauss's decision to set it in 1947, when it could be taken to imply that the last war was really a squabble over nothing important. Perhaps he was still writing in the genres of the 1920s and 1930s, reworking classical forms as lyrical modern satire, as in his own Aegyptische Helena and Braunfels' Die Voegel. It also seems strange that Strauss intended it for performance at his son's school, by students and staff, since there is a lot of crude humour and an obscene running joke about the elderly priest and the ass driver's prepubescent daughter. But all of the jokes have antecedents in Aristophanes, who gets a name check and homage in the chorus of sacred frogs who say koax koax. And they are the sort of jokes smallish boys find killingly funny. The music is recognizably Strauss, though with many comic-opera touches, like the donkey's persistent hoofbeats in the overture. The vocal numbers are brief and self-contained. Some of them could come from Chu Chin Chow except for the texture of the orchestra. A trio on the power of music, and the last chorus, in which all are reconciled after seeing the pathetic corpse of the donkey, use a melody that is similar to a Catholic eucharistic hymn, perhaps a nod to the school's denomination. The performance of this obscure and insubstantial work in the Covent Garden Festival was sold out weeks ago, to my great surprise. It turned out that Peter Ustinov was narrating, as he did on the recording, and not too many people were there for Strauss, or even the donkey, as I was. St Paul's is a terrific church -- it commemorates actors (I was sitting next to Dennis Price's plaque) -- but it echoes like an underground car park. The singers didn't have a chance, except for Richard Suart as the judge, who got to sing ex cathedra from the pulpit at one point. Peter Ustinov was miked, and didn't have to compete with the orchestra at all. But they were a fine cast in theory. Andrew Shore was good and curmugeonly as the bald, fat quack Struthion. Jeremy White was thoroughly Old Labour as the demagogue cobbler Kenteterion, and came closet of the men to beating the acoustics. Stephen Brown and Leandros Taliotis were agile and facile as the lawyers. Mary Nelson didn't sound the least prepubescent, but made light work of a very pared-down Zerbinetta aria. Peter Ustinov narrated the whole thing as if over port and nuts, with a lot of cigar smoke. He did the various characters proficiently, but treating the narrative as a sequence of sneers about easy targets, with physically cruel and smutty inclusions, made it fall flat. (There was something remniscent of Robertson Davies' approach to The golden ass, though Ustinov had no pretensions to literary quality.) The musical sections had wit and real bite, but the narrative seemed to go on forever in between. Regards, Helen - H.E. Elsom he@helsom.demon.co.uk http://www.helsom.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to the LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.