| http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2007/Jul-Dec07/eif4.htm
Posted by Martin Walker on September 6, 2007, 11:25 am
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I am going to lay myself open to the (rather cheap) charge of displaying "extraordinary stupidity or outrageous disingenuousness" by saying that I, too, do not see the connection of this opera with National Socialism. I also regard it as, well, banal & disingenuous to exemplify some putative struggle with evil by "the glory of the closing music as against the banality of the Major-Domo's announcement that supper is served" ( "so here did art [win out], the entirety of its enterprise, including music, words, and theatre, against its surrounding evil") - as though the Major-Domo's announcement had anything whatever to do with Arendt's famous if dubious characterisation of "the banality of evil". While another rather smug recent review on the site quoted Adorno to reinforce the critic's distaste for Salome & then went on to glorify the inflated Shostakovich, of all composers, whom Adorno would have dismissed with an ironic shrug, here it is Henze who is permitted to deliver the fatal blow - ignoring the utter contempt which Wilhelm & his entourage had for all the products of contemporary German culture; well, a genius like Henze is permitted to say extremely silly things...How Furtwängler becomes a "hero" is your reviewer's secret; Strauss was very clearly not one, but he was trying to protect his daughter-in-law (& perhaps other Jews), not merely his own interests.Amid all the obfuscation it is difficult to see how your review offers any evidence at all for the "interpretation" of Capriccio you so enthusiastically affirm - why the cyanide capsule or the yellow star, for instance, gratuitous signs of political correctness that leave me feeling slightly queasy - or why "entertainment" should be incompatible with a serious engagement with the various layers of the work that feels no particular trendy need to use props alluding to the horrors of the Third Reich. I think both Ernst Bloch (kind of you to grant he "might have understood" something) or Adorno would have been distinctly underwhelmed by this Tui-like pseudo-seriousness.
As for comparing the distinctly anti-Jewish Wagner with Strauss to the latter's disadvantage!!! But here I will stop.
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