Die Frau ohne Schatten
David Hockney production, presumably Act III
Photo: Robert Millard, courtesy of San Francisco Opera
If you're reading this blog, it's very, very likely that you know that as part of its centennial season, San Francisco Opera is presenting, for the first time in more than 30 years, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Die Frau ohne Schatten. Frau is a monster and a monument, with a gigantic orchestra and a libretto that is, well, complicated and full of contentious issues.
A few weeks ago, Larry Wolff gave a presentation about Frau to the Wagner Society of Northern California about Frau. Wolff is a professor of history at NYU, and his speciality, as far as I can tell from his bio and the books he's written, is central European history from the 18th century to the early 20th century. His is also an opera lover, from an early enough age that his first opera was Aida at the old Met, and he has a professional level of knowledge about opera.
His presentation was based on his most recent book, The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, which was published on May 2 by Stanford University Press. I ordered a copy from my local bookstore during his presentation and I'm reading it now. The title is a double entendre, referring to both Strauss and Hofmannsthal's Kaiserin and Empress Zita, the last Habsburg empress.
You can still see Wolff's Frau presentation!
- On-demand video at the Wagner Society's Vimeo page
- At the San Francisco Public Library's main branch, in Civic Center, on Friday, June 2, 2023, at 2 pm
He's an engaging speaker and I loved the presentation, which includes some touching family history. If you're interested in Frau, see the presentation, buy the book, see the opera - which you can do in person or by livestream on June 20, at 7 p.m. Pacific time.
3 comments:
This is such a weird opera, and little of it makes much sense unless you've spent time decoding the libretto, but I'd love to see what Hockney did in terms of the production. I love Hockney.
The production photos are gorgeous and otherworldly enough to put one into a fairy tale. I've seen a couple of the streamed / broadcast productions and they're generally good without quite capturing the feel of what it was like in the house. Last fall's Orpheus was so much more beautiful and effective in the house. And the direction & camerawork in Jenufa were good, but one thing that didn't come across was how completely Karita Mattila dominated the stage as Kostelnicka. Regardless, the livestream, which costs $27.50, will provide a decent look at the production.
It IS really weird. Joshua Kosman wrote a thunderous feature about the pro-natalist aspects of the story; I have a heavily footnoted article written by a friend about how we need to look at the events of the opera as symbolic, and I'm like....I'm with Joshua. It is nearly impossible to read the work any other way in 2023, because children and the possibility of children are so central to the story line.
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