The "Ariadne auf Naxos" of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss

Front matter

UNC STUDIES IN THE GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES 80

The Ariadne auf Naxos of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss

Donald G. Daviau George J. Buelow

Preface

The impetus for this book came from an interdisciplinary seminar taught by the authors at the University of California, Riverside, in 1967. The purpose of that seminar was to introduce students from the fields of German literature and music to the complexities and artistic merits of the opera collaborations of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Although the seminar permitted us to examine in some detail all six operas that were produced, it soon became evident that a book covering all six operas would be beyond the scope of any single publication. Since one of the striking conclusions of the seminar was the importance, indeed, the uniqueness of Ariadne auf Naxos in the history of the collaboration, it was this opera that became the focal point of interest. Much of the information relating to Ariadne is equally applicable to their other joint works, and an understanding of Ariadne will contribute to greater appreciation of all of the Strauss-Hofmannsthal | operas.

Originally, we hoped to make our book a comprehensive examination of every facet of the Ariadne collaboration, but this plan was revised when the result became an unwieldy manuscript of excessive length. It was necessary, therefore, to eliminate two chapters examining Hofmannsthal’s final adaptation of Der Bürger als Edelmann as a drama and also Strauss’s arrangement into a suite for orchestra of the music used in that final dramatic version. Two additional chapters that were intended to show the place of Ariadne in the framework of both artists’ overall creative output were also omitted. |

In its final form the book attempts to present in detail the extraordinary development of the Ariadne idea from its conception to the final operatic version. Uppermost in our minds was the intention to represent fully the viewpoint of both the composer and librettist, so as to enable the reader to comprehend the enormous personal and artistic complications which were overcome to produce this opera. Accordingly, the workshop correspondence is quoted extensively; for here the reader who might otherwise be unfamiliar with these fascinatingly informative letters has the opportunity to sense the give-and-take struggle that animated this collaboration.

In one sense it has been difficult to write a study that will appeal to the musicologist, the literary specialist, and also to the general reader. In some instances one group of readers may possibly feel the material to be superfluous. However, such background information as is found in the early chapters, for example, we felt was necessary for the general reader. Also, clearly, the literary specialist may not know any more about Richard Strauss than the musicologist may know about Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The book is intended to be self-contained, and for this reason, too, reviews of the premiere performance have been quoted in detail, simply because they are not readily available, and because they contribute importantly to an understanding of the initially hostile critical reception which led to the subsequent decision to revise the work.

Throughout the main part of the text we have employed English for the convenience of readers who might not know German. Since the documentation in the footnotes will be of interest primarily to the specialist, we have cited this material in the original language. However, in the four chapters discussing the literary and musical interpretations of the opera, both the original German and an English translation are included on the page to facilitate reading, for locating the passages in the score, and for making the meaning of the text immediately unambiguous. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the authors’; in the case of the text from Ariadne, it should especially be noted that the English is meant to be fairly literal, not poetic.

Although there are a number of studies and books on Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Arabella, and Die Agyptische Helena, this is the first major study in any language of Ariadne auf Naxos, and the first full-length work in English on any of the Strauss- Hofmannsthal operas. It is also, as far as the authors are aware, the first attempt to discuss an opera jointly by both a literary and a music critic. Finally, this is one of the few books to appear to date in English on Hofmannsthal, and we hope it will serve to increase the awareness of English-speaking readers to one of the world’s great writers.

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the University of California at Riverside and to Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and its Research Council for supporting the preparation of this study generously from its inception to its publication. Many colleagues and students have contributed freely of their time in reading the manuscript and making invaluable suggestions, and to them we extend our sincere thanks. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Dr. Ada Schmidt, whose sensitive reading and helpful ideas benefited the manuscript greatly, and to Dr. Jorun Johns, who, in addition to numerous textual suggestions, carefully proofread the manuscript. Finally, the authors wish to thank Collins Publishers for permission to quote extensively from The Correspondence between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, edited by Franz and Alice Strauss and translated by Hanns Hammelmann and Ewald Osers (London, 1961), and the publishers of Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss: Copyright 1912, 1913, 1916, 1922, 1924 by Adolph Fürstner and Fürstner, Ltd. Copyright Renewed 1940, 1941, 1944, 1949, 1951. Copyright and Renewal assigned to Boosey and Hawks, Ltd. Reprinted by permission.

Riverside, California Donald G. Daviau New Brunswick, New Jersey George J. Buelow

Contents

INTRODUCTION See. a | II. THE GENESIS OF THE OPERA... 20: ek 31 Then Overruled aan aeons ened feat es ae 166 Scene III: Naiad, Dryad, Echo-Trio, Ariadne, IX: IHEKORSPIEL: unse ante each ee eee 219 EPILOGUE searr cite aaah a an ee ee 245 HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL: A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 254

Every living thing and every landscape reveals itself once and completely: but only to a deeply moved heart. (Hofmannsthal, Prosa Ill, 26).

Thus, I believe I will always be able to give you something, only what I can give you will, of course, always depend upon what you contain within yourself.

Introduction

Ariadne auf Naxos, with libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and music by Richard Strauss, the third in a series of six operatic collaborations of two of the greatest creative personalities of central Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, has never been adequately interpreted as an opera; that is, as a complex theatrical unity combining effectively words, music, dance, gesture, mime, staging, and lighting. Nor has the pivotal position of this work within the overall production of the two men ever been fully investigated.

The failure of previous studies to do justice to Ariadne auf Naxos—and incidentally, to the other operas of Hofmannsthal and Strauss as well—results from their unilateral scholarly approach. Musicologists concentrate almost exclusively upon musical problems, while literary critics, who generally lack musical training, have of necessity omitted any consideration of the music from their judgment of the libretto. Hence, the purely musical analyses fail to appreciate the subtleties and complexities that give Hofmannsthal’s text its exceptional poetic depth and significance. The exclusively literary interpretations violate the basic premise of the operatic form by disregarding the important fact that Ariadne auf Naxos is not a self-contained drama but a libretto. |

To approach Ariadne other than as a totality of musical and poetic forces is to destroy the very unity that Hofmannsthal and Strauss struggled so arduously to achieve and to misunderstand the ambition to create a new genre which originally brought the two artists together. Hofmannsthal felt after 1900 that he had reached the limits of his expressive powers with words alone. He turned to the writing of librettos against the well-meant advice of his friends, specifically in order to expand his means of artistic expression through the addition of music.

Just as Hofmannsthal had wearied of writing lyric dramas and was experimenting with new artistic forms, Strauss had tired of writing symphonic poems. When he approached Hofmannsthal concerning Elektra in 1906, he had already written three operas, including the internationally successful Salome. He recognized that opera was his destiny. He also knew that his future career would succeed only if he could obtain opera librettos of high poetic quality that he required to stimulate his musical genius.

The goal of their collaboration is perhaps best expressed by Hofmannsthal in his “Unwritten Postscript to Rosenkavalier”: “A work is a unified whole, and the work of two men can also be a unified whole. Much is common to contemporaries, also of one’s own. Threads run back and forth, related elements run together. Whoever separates, will do wrong. Whoever picks out one thing, forgets that, unnoticed, the unity always suffers. The music ought not to be torn from the text nor the word from the animated scene. This work is made for the stage, not for the book or for the individual at his piano” (Prosa III, 43).

Although these words were written as a postscript to their second opera, Der Rosenkavalier, they are more relevant to their next work, Ariadne, which was the first opera that the two men wrote together from the beginning. Therefore, to ignore any of the concomitant artistic aspects of Ariadne auf Naxos is to overlook the carefully unified form of the opera expressly intended by its creators.

Accordingly, the present authors have proceeded from four basic assumptions: (1) that Ariadne can only be understood as a totality; (2) that the collaboration of two artists such as Hofmannsthal and Strauss, each preeminent in his own discipline, is unique in operatic history; (3) that Ariadne commands a significant position not only among the six operas of Strauss and Hofmannsthal but in the framework of their overall production; (4) that this work is epochal in the history of early twentieth-century German opera.

The reasons underlying the first assumption have been suggested already. Concerning the second assumption, the history of opera, while recording a number of productive collaborations between famous men, reveals few instances in which both author and musician were equally gifted masters of their respective arts. Among the most famous were Mozart and Da Ponte, Verdi and Boito, Puccini and Giacosa and Illica, Gilbert and Sullivan, and more recently, Stravinsky and Auden, and Brecht and Weill. Except for Gilbert and Sullivan, none of these partnerships endured over as long a period, none achieved the consistently high quality of text and music, and none experimented as vigorously as did Hofmannsthal and Strauss in their endeavor to expand and enrich the form of opera.

By collaborating with the composer through every phase of his work, Hofmannsthal struggled to transcend the limitations of the older concept of opera as simply drama with music. Instead, he envisioned a tantalizing goal: a totally unified creation of all of the contributing art forms, harmoniously and inseparably blended into a superior vehicle of expression. Reaching back through the Austro-Bavarian baroque tradition to the Greek roots of drama as festival, he sought to create an artistic form that would permit a greater depth of insight into the unseen forces and unity of the world than any art form could achieve independently. He aspired to nothing less than to develop opera into a leading art form if not actually into the predominant genre of the twentieth century.

Hofmannsthal’s idealism was matched only by his audacity, considering the lack on his part of any technical knowledge of music. In fact, in the beginning, he lacked even a realistic understanding of the artistic problems that would confront him in writing librettos. Although he may have failed ultimately in his quest for a new genre, this does not diminish the value of his experiment. Works like Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten, the two operas coming closest to Hofmannsthal’s ideal, stand on their own merits. Moreover, the possible influence of this experimentation on such later collaborations as Brecht and Weill and more recently Dürrenmatt and Burckhardt remains to be investigated.

The uniqueness of the collaboration is further underscored by the published record of their workshop correspondence, making available the rarest form of insight into their ideas, creative working methods, goals, disagreements, satisfactions, and disappointments. Since Strauss lived and worked primarily in his Alpine retreat in the Bavarian resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, while Hofmannsthal remained relatively secluded in his modest rococo villa at Rodaun in the suburbs of Vienna, they met only infrequently and communicated largely by letters. These documents present the genesis and evolution of their combined work with a richness of detail previously unknown in the history of music.

The third basic assumption of this book is that among the six operas produced by Strauss and Hofmannsthal—Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Die Agyptische Helena and Arabella—Ariadne most nearly realizes Hofmannsthal’s ambition for a genuine synthesis of various art forms. Ariadne auf Naxos was the first of their combined works conceived from the beginning as a libretto and worked out jointly in every aspect from start to finish. Hofmannsthal had written Elektra as an independent drama before he had joined forces with Strauss, and it was performed as a play before Strauss set it to music.

Although the libretto to Der Rosenkavalier benefited from many suggestions by Strauss, particularly with regard to the character of Baron Ochs von Lerchenau, it was still written mainly as an independent play. The descriptive designation applied to the work by Hofmannsthal— Komödie für Musik—shows the relationship of the text to the music. Like Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, too, has been staged as a spoken drama, a fact which demonstrates the independent nature of the libretto. As the letters reveal, Hofmannsthal had still not fully mastered the technique of writing a text for music. Despite its immediate success and popularity, Hofmannsthal acknowledged to Strauss that Der Rosenkavalier did not satisfy him in every respect; that is, he had failed to achieve the homogeneous blend of forms he had envisioned. By contrast, Ariadne auf Naxos, imagined and executed throughout in terms of the perfect fusion of text and music, became Hofmannsthal’s favorite creation and the one that he never ceased to defend and cherish.

From the standpoint of technique, Ariadne auf Naxos presented the greatest challenge to its creators (and to the critics and public), for it was a bold attempt to give somewhat faded and outmoded traditional forms a new life and meaning. In a then daring blend of baroque and classical styles and structure, the opera is thoroughly modern. Judged by present-day standards of art, in which unity of style and form have been virtually obliterated through various formal experiments with the grotesque and bizarre, Ariadne auf Naxos seems conservative. Yet, at its premiere in 1912, the seemingly abnormal combination of forms and styles aroused the antagonism of critics, who attacked this fragile experimental work as an eccentric, aberrational example of avant-garde art.

This brings us to our final basic assumption: the significant position of this opera in the modern period. The distinctly neo-classical elements of _ Strauss’s opera, the employment of a minimum number of instrumentalists that spelled the abandonment of the huge symphonic forces of late nineteenth-century German music, and the return to baroque and classical models of vocal style, all combine to make Ariadne auf Naxos the first neo-classical opera of the twentieth century. Completed in 1912, the opera antedates all of the major neo-classical works of Hindemith and Stravinsky, even though the latter are usually cited as having first employed the neo-classical in music. It would not be an exaggeration to trace the influence of Strauss’s innovations in Ariadne as far as 1951 when Stravinsky completed his neo-classical opera, The Rake’s Progress.

The departure from traditional operatic form produced most of the early misunderstandings that have clung to Ariadne through the years and has been one of the major drawbacks to its general acceptance. No other independent or combined work of Hofmannsthal and Strauss, including the much more obscure symbolic work, Die Frau ohne Schatten, which is a direct outgrowth of Ariadne, has been enmeshed in such confusing controversy. No other work was plagued with so many difficulties in its creation, performance, and critical reception.

Although Ariadne was originally meant to be a mere interlude between important works, Hofmannsthal, as he became increasingly aware of the significance of the theme to his overall development, turned aggressively protective toward his creation and adamantly stubborn in its defense. The more Strauss expressed indifference toward the work and proposed various compromises, the more emphatically Hofmannsthal insisted on its integrity and quality. Despite his early deferential attitude toward Strauss, partly because of his unsure beginnings as a librettist in Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier, Hofmannsthal asserted his intellectual superiority in the course of protecting Ariadne and became the dominant partner during this collaboration.

Ariadne auf Naxos was the sixth of fifteen operas that Strauss composed during the remarkably extended creative period between 1893, the year in which he completed Guntram, and 1941, when Capriccio was finished. Ariadne is the strategic work, containing the key to the future artistic development of Strauss. Just as Ariadne represents the creative midpoint for Strauss, the opera stands chronologically almost at the exact center of Hofmannsthal’s career which extends from 1891 to 1929. Thematically as well as formally, Ariadne auf Naxos represents the culmination of his early development as an artist and contains the seeds of almost all of his later works.

The first version of Ariadne auf Naxos, which was intended as a chamber opera to climax Hofmannsthal’s adaptation of Moliere’s famous comedy Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, met with only limited success, for reasons we shall detail. Despite Strauss’s strong protests, Hofmannsthal finally won him over to revising the whole work. The new version of 1916 eliminated Moliére’s play and substituted a new Vorspiel to be sung preceding the actual opera. Since only this revised version is performed today, our analyses of both text and music will concentrate on the final rather than the original version.

The textual analysis aims to show the significance of the libretto in terms of Hofmannsthal’s overall production as well as in terms of its own importance. The same general plan has been followed in the interpretation of Strauss’s music. Finally, our aim has been to interpret this work as an opera; that is, as a synthesis of major art forms, in an attempt to determine how far Hofmannsthal and Strauss actually succeeded in creating a new art form.

Chapter I Hofmannsthal and Strauss

The miracle of the collaboration between Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss is not that these two artists should have produced six works of such consistently high quality, but that they could work together at all. Two individuals of differing nature and temperament, both as men and artists, could scarcely be imagined. Paradoxically, their dissimilarity proved to be the great strength of their relationship, for each man complemented the personality and professional genius of the other. |

Strauss was one of the most gifted orchestral conductors of all time and had years of experience conducting in most of the European opera houses. He had grown up musically in the opera house, acquiring a practical understanding of the total range of opera production and a sensitivity to the elements of dramatic action that were essential to effective musical theater.

Hofmannsthal, who readily admitted that Strauss possessed the stronger dramatic instinct, had only limited experience with the practical side of the theater. While he knew a number of directors and actors and was interested in the problems of staging, he never attempted to direct or produce a play independently. His major efforts in this area were an unsuccessful attempt in 1904 to collaborate with Gordon Craig in designing the stage setting for a production of Hofmannsthal’s drama, Das gerettete Venedig, and his assisting of Max Reinhardt in creating a production of another of his dramas, Der Tor und der Tod, in Berlin in 1908.' As a dramatist, Hofmannsthal only rarely overcame the lyrical orientation of his early works to produce a theatrically compelling work such as Elektra. Although Hofmannsthal was by no means the decadent aesthete critics often considered (and still consider) him to be, it is true that throughout his career he remained essentially a symbolic writer of extremely refined taste and high artistic standards. Rather than compromise his artistic integrity to achieve popular success, he was willing,

! Hofmannsthal regarded this episode in his life as an important phase in his development as a dramatist. To his father he wrote in May 1908: “Es scheint mir sehr möglich, daß man einmal von diesem oder von dem vorigen Sommer die Zeit meiner eigentlichen Theaterschriftstellerei wird datieren können.” Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Briefe II (Vienna, 1937), 324. Unless otherwise indicated, all works cited are by Hofmannsthal.

if necessary, to leave his works to the judgment of posterity. Strauss, conversely, was much more interested in texts that were theatrically effective, since he knew this ingredient was essential to his success as an Opera composer.

The impact of each personality on the other occurred at a critical juncture in the life of both artists. Hofmannsthal, after a brilliant decade as a lyric poet and lyric dramatist was searching for a new artistic direction to follow. His experiments over several years in a wide variety of artistic forms, including classical tragedy, ballet, pantomime, and dance, attracted him increasingly to the rich possibilities of expression inherent in music. Strauss, who had grown bored with his own extensive exploration of symphonic forms in general and the tone poem in particular, needed a librettist who could provide him with appropriate texts to inspire his essentially word-oriented musical genius. Throughout the composer’s career, he wrote his best music when led to tone through verbal concepts, whether they were words by Lenau to Don Juan, the humor and pathos of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, or the sensuousness and depravity of Wilde’s Salome. Strauss tried his own hand at writing a libretto for his first opera, Guntram, but quickly realized that he lacked literary talent.

Hofmannsthal originally approached Strauss in 1900 with a ballet scenario he had just completed, entitled Der Triumph der Zeit. The composer graciously declined the opportunity to set it to music on the grounds that he was currently working on a ballet of his own composition (which he never finished) and doubted he would wish to undertake a second ballet at that time. Contact between the two men was not renewed until 1906 when Strauss, who had just completed the opera Salome, took the initiative and asked Hofmannsthal for permission to use his drama Elektra as the basis for an opera. From this beginning the collaboration between these two men, who felt they had “been brought together by something higher, perhaps, than mere accident,”? continued in an unbroken line until Hofmannsthal’s sudden and untimely death in 1929. The final item of correspondence in the published volume of their letters is a telegram from Strauss to Hofmannsthal dated 14 July 1929, conveying Strauss’s thanks for the completed text to the first act of Arabella. Hofmannsthal died before the message reached him.

To have been approached by Strauss about one of his works must have impressed Hofmannsthal as an event of considerable magnitude. The years from 1899 to 1906, while productive in terms of quantity of ideas, drafts, and sketches, had been relatively lean in the number of completed and published works. Many of the projects attempted during

2 The Correspondence between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, ed. Franz and Alice Strauss, trans. Hanns Hammelmann and Ewald Osers, arranged by Willi Schuh (London, 1961), p. 106. Hereafter cited in the text as C. followed by page number.

this period remained fragments.? Hofmannsthal himself later attributed the difficulties of this critical phase in his literary career, when his talent for lyric poetry had atrophied,* and when he had wearied of writing lyric dramas,? to the process of maturing.®

As a writer Hofmannsthal had reached the point where he wished to concern himself more actively with life in its broader social forms rather than remaining an introspective onlooker. He now realized that to comment on life in beautiful, melancholic lyric verse was neither a sufficient compensation nor an adequate substitute for living which, in his view, demanded social participation of the individual through commitment to others.” The contemplative, introverted existence, he discovered, was debilitating, and even a life devoted to beauty could be stifling. As he wrote in 1896 to his good friend Leopold von Andrian, another writer who was experiencing the same problem: “The beautiful

3 A good case in point is Hofmannsthal’s attempt in 1901 to adapt Robert Browning’s epic, The Ring and the Book, into a Renaissance tragedy, entitled Die Grafin Pompilia. Although he worked on this project for over two years (1901-1903), the manuscript was never completed and has never been published. For a detailed discussion, see Hanna B. Lewis, “Hofmannsthal and Browning,” Comparative Literature, 19 (1967), 142-59. In a letter to the German poet Richard Dehmel on 1 December 1901, Hofmannsthal stated: “Sonderbar ist es mir selber, daß in vielen Monaten, und Monaten von gliicklicher Konzentration, nicht mehr ein einziges Gedicht entstehen will. Das tut mir innerlich recht leid.” Briefe II, 61. Only a few poems were written after 1900, and these are generally not ranked with Hofmannsthal’s best efforts.

In a letter written in early 1899 to Hermann Bahr, Hofmannsthal commented: “. . . jetzt wird’s immer ernsthafter, ich bin schon gar nicht mehr so jung, ich verlange mir die Bühne doch viel stärker als früher, . . .” Briefe I, 276-77. For additional comments by Hofmannsthal in the same vein see his letter to Otto Brahm in Briefe I, 324, and his letter to Schnitzler in Briefe II, 53.

A most revealing letter to his close friend R. A. Schröder, dated 14 February 1902 shows Hofmannsthal’s understanding of his problem and his optimism for the future: “Es war mein 28ter Geburtstag, und ich glaube die beängstigende nun seit fast zwei Jahren—mit gewissen trügerischen Unterbrechungen—anhaltende Erstarrung meiner produktiven Kräfte auch so auffassen zu sollen: als den mühsamen Übergang von der Produktion des Jünglingsalters zu der männlichen; als einen tiefen, nach außen nur durch Schmerz und Dumpfheit fühlbaren Prozeß der inneren Umwandlung.” Briefe II, 67. Hofmannsthal confessed to his confidant Bodenhausen that the majority of his poems were written during the loneliest period of his life. “Meine Gedichte sind fast alle aus einer Zeit meines Lebens, aus der allereinsamsten: der zwischen meinem achtzehnten und einundzwanzigsten Jahr. Mitten aus dieser Einsamkeit heraus, die merkwürdig stark war und immer wie außen war, sind diese Gedichte entstanden—sie rufen ihre Liebe an das Dasein über diesen Gürtel von Einsamkeit hinüber—jetzt aber ist diese Zone von Einsamkeit nicht mehr da, es ist überall die Liebe verteilt, wenn auch noch in sehr unzulänglicher Weise, aber doch verteilt—und ich bin um vieles, unvergleichlich, glücklicher als damals. Aus dieser Verfassung heraus könnten vielleicht wieder Gedichte entstehen, ebenso reine und starke, aber ganz anders als die damaligen, und solche werden vielleicht auch noch entstehen, aber wahrscheinlich bin ich für diese noch nicht reif.” Hugo von Hofmannsthal— Eberhard von Bodenhausen: Briefe der Freundschaft, ed. Dora Freifrau von Bodenhausen (Düsseldorf, 1953), p. 128. Actually, Hofmannsthal never regained his gift for lyric poetry per se, although all of his later works continue to be suffused with lyricism.

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life impoverishes one. If one could always live as one desired, one would lose all his strength.”® Hofmannsthal’s acceptance of his own awareness that life demanded the involvement of deeds, not just words, led him to the theater and particularly to the comedy as his major form. Drama enabled him to show people engaged in social interaction and provided the means of presenting his life ethic in plastic, visual terms.

Thus, although he remained a writer, Hofmannsthal’s works underwent a change of focus from the I to the Thou, a shift of emphasis that was as much for his own benefit and guidance as for that of the public. His view was most concisely stated in the autobiographical comments contained in Ad me Ipsum: “The way to the social as the way to the higher self: the non-mystical way: a) through the deed, b) through the [literary] work, c) through the child.”® His personal way of attaining human contact in life or what he called “das Soziale” was through his comedies. '° The change of artistic direction was also partly motivated by his desire to achieve genuine popular success instead of merely the succes d’éstime of his early lyrical writings. Hofmannsthal was eager to reach the people and not only a small circle of connoisseurs. In Austria, perhaps the most theater-going nation in the world, drama represented the most direct route to the general public, to recognition, and, not an unimportant consideration, to financial success. Despite his reputation, Hofmannsthal was never financially secure.

The transition was not easy. But the severity of the experience proved ultimately beneficial, for it made Hofmannsthal receptive to new forms and led him eventually into the promising fields of comedy and opera. His experiments during this period with pantomime'' and ballet benefited his later dramas and operas which involve greater reliance on gesture, dance, and mimicry. Because these forms represent the basic ingredients of drama, such experimentation demonstrates Hofmannsthal’s willingness to return to the beginnings of dramatic tradition in order to attain the technical proficiency necessary to create successful theater. Following these experiments, and to sharpen his understanding of dramatic form, Hofmannsthal began a series of adaptations of famous dramas, including Otway’s Venice Preserved and Sophocles’s Elektra, the tragedy that attracted Strauss’s attention in 1906.

Richard Strauss was by this time internationally famous both as conductor and composer. More than any other composer writing in the final years of the nineteenth century, Strauss dominated the long and

8 Hugo von Hofmannsthal—Leopold von Andrian: Briefwechsel, ed. Walter Perl (Frankfurt am Main, 1968), p. 64. All translations in the text were made by the authors unless otherwise indicated.