Ariadne auf Naxos
Royal Opera House
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Sadler’s Wells
One of the odd things about the Strauss–Hofmannsthal collaboration is that while the literary half was endlessly aspiring, writing works which might serve the high function which Wagner saw for music–drama, even if Hofmannsthal didn’t much care for Wagner’s works, the musical half was the most perfect embodiment of the homme moyen sensuel in the history of music, most at home when he was at home, astonishingly industrious yet seeming to celebrate above all the virtues of a relaxed domestic existence. Their correspondence shows how ill-suited they were to one another in crucial ways, and it can’t exactly be said that each curbed the other’s excesses. Their highest point of tension may have been Ariadne auf Naxos, yet in that case the results were largely fruitful until the near-disastrous last 20 minutes of high-minded twaddle.
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