your concert programme here

Friday 12 June 2009 at 7.30pm
Deborah Voigt soprano
London Symphony Orchestra
Asher Fisch conductor
Wagner Tannhäuser – Entry of the guests (arr. Hoffmann); Dich, teure Halle
Wagner Die Walküre – Du bist der Lenz
Wagner, arr. Humperdinck Götterdämmerung – Siegfried’s Rhine Journey
Richard Strauss Die Aegyptische Helena – Zweite Braut nacht
Richard Strauss Elektra – Ich kann nicht sitzen
interval
Beethoven Fidelio – Overture; Abscheulicher
Richard Strauss Salome – Dance of the Seven Veils; Closing Scene
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Notes
From Breeches to Seven Veils:
reinventing women for the 19th century
by Christopher Cook
If opera is a song of love and death then for most of the
German 19th century it’s the women who die, throwing
themselves off cliffs as their mysterious lovers sail for the
horizon, singing themselves ecstatically into eternity over
the corpse of their beloved, or riding into funeral pyres.
It’s the women who sing, too. Huge tracts of music that
demand concentration and stamina. It was the great
Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson who, when asked
what was essential for the role of Isolde, replied, ‘a
comfortable pair of shoes’. And there was a British
Elektra who, when she briefly left the stage in search of
the axe with which her brother was to dismember their
mother, supposedly swigged on a bottle of stout parked
behind the scenery to keep up her strength.
The dying is more problematic than the singing. Is it
merely a convention – a rousing end to a musical
tragedy – hardwired into opera from the time of
Monteverdi’s Orfeo? Or is it, as feminists might argue, a
prime example of patriarchal power in which a male
fantasy of total control over women’s lives – to the point
of death – is enacted in the theatre night after night?
Another feminist reading would have women literally
dying under the weight of music that only men can
properly understand, such as Isolde, singing herself to
death in the Liebestod in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.
And in fetishising the voice as the only thing of real
interest in a singer – just look at the acres of printers’ ink
spilt over Jenny Lind or Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, or
Nelly Melba or Amalia Materna – men reify women,
turn them into objects for their pleasure. Then again,
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maybe there’s a Freudian anxiety here, a fear that
women might emasculate men if not dealt with first.
So power, death by song, the soprano voice fetishised
and castration: the 19th-century opera house is jampacked with fantasies and fears. And by the time we
arrive at the music dramas that put Richard Strauss’s
operatic reputation on the map, with Salome and
Elektra, it has literally become a house of horror.
That’s an end to a story that began in a very different
spirit with Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, a work that
cost him dearly as he struggled to get the drama and the
music right. He composed no fewer than four overtures
for a work that went through three versions before
emerging in 1814 in the form in which it is generally
performed today. Beethoven’s heroine Leonora isn’t
killed by the guards, nor does she dance herself to death
in the ultimate dionysiac dithyramb. Indeed, as far as we
know, this faithful wife – who has rescued her beloved
husband Florestan from prison – lives happily ever after.
And the heroine who sings Leonora’s great aria
‘Abscheulicher’ has earned her right to live. Based on the
standard Mozartian model of a recitative, a reflective
adagio and a rousing allegro, it remains one of the most
taxing in the soprano repertoire, simultaneously
demanding an impeccable legato and the ability to
move through the breaks in the voice without a squeal of,
well, the brakes. And that final run from pianissimo to
fortissimo on a top B has been the ruin of many a good
Leonora. The psychology is equally taxing. From fury at
Notes
the evil plot to murder her imprisoned husband
Florestan, to a tender reassertion of her own humanity
and then, with the horns in attendance, to a hymn to the
obligation of married love, and, finally, her rousing
determination to save Florestan. And all in about sevenand-a-half minutes. Fidelio celebrates woman as wife
and the heroine as hero – and how touching that when
Leonora chooses her nom d’évasion it should begin with
the same letter as that of her imprisoned husband.
The journey from Leonora, the faithful wife, to the
avenging fury Elektra and beyond to the Egyptian Helen
encapsulates the way in which images of women are
reinvented through the 19th and into the 20th centuries.
At a simple level it’s an operatic version of that classic
opposition between women as Angels of the Hearth and
Whores. But within that opposition, in German opera at
least, there are subtler aspects. Not least the power of
romantic love which, for Wagner’s heroines, offers the
promise of liberation. The heroine – every bit as much as
the hero – is in revolt against society, proclaiming the
primacy of personal fulfilment over social responsibility
or even domestic respectability. You can no more
imagine Brünnhilde running Tristan’s household than you
can Leonora jumping on a horse and riding into
Florestan’s funeral pyre. (It was the hens pecking at the
ground and Marzellina ironing at the very beginning of
Peter Hall’s production of Fidelio at Glyndebourne that
made it so satisfying.)
Where should we look for the origins of these conflicting
images of women? To Weimar, perhaps, and to two of
Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s finest works: Faust, notably
Gretchen’s Assumption in the closing scene of the
drama, and to his radical novel Elective Affinities. This
novel, published in 1809, may set out to prove a chemical
theory about human emotions but it is personal
chemistry that drives the story of this adulterous ménage
à quatre, with Eduard and Charlotte stuck in a dull
second marriage inviting the Captain and Ottilie to visit
them on their estate. What the novel explores is the idea
of personal satisfaction and fulfilment at the expense of
social responsibility. And the idea of following your heart
rather than your marriage lines was to become one of
the great themes in 19th-century culture: fine if you’re a
man, but usually the high road to disaster for women.
In Act One of Wagner’s Die Walküre, the second part of
his Ring cycle, Siegmund and Sieglinde are not only
adulterous lovers, they are also brother and sister. No
wonder that Fricka, consort of Wotan and Goddess of
Marriage, is outraged by this zwillingspaar, defiling the
marriage bed and incestuous too. In ‘Du bist der Lenz’
from the First Act, Sieglinde, who is about to flee from
her husband Hunding, compares Siegmund, her newly
found brother and lover, to Spring itself. A moment
earlier – albeit a Wagnerian moment, so actually several
minutes earlier – Spring has literally burst through the
front door in one of the most magical moments in the
whole Ring cycle. Sieglinde, however, is hymning more
than nature in ‘Du bist der Lenz’. If Siegmund is the
Spring that she has been waiting for then surely their
relationship is also as natural as Spring. Nature and
social convention – marriage in this instance – are
3
Notes
impossible bedfellows. But perhaps the key to this aria is
in the final lines ‘als in frostig öder Fremde zuerst ich den
Freund ersah’ (when cold, lonely and estranged I first
saw my friend). This is not woman as wife or lover or
redeemer or agent of disaster, but simply as friend. We’re
only a step on from the wife-as-companion in Fidelio.
Of course it will end badly. Siegmund will be killed and
Sieglinde, pregnant with their child, will be hustled off
into a dark forest where she gives birth to Siegfried and
dies, leaving the hero of the next opera in the Ring to be
brought up by the murderous dwarf Mime.
Wagner, you may feel, was heavily into punishing his
women. But he also subscribed to the notion that they
might redeem fallen men. This is another idea found in
Goethe, specifically in the final scene of the second part
of Faust, when the Chorus Mysticus usher Gretchen’s soul
into heaven:
Alles Vergängliche
Ist nur ein Gleichnis.
Das Unzulängliche
Hier wird’s Ereignis.
Das Unbeschreibliche
Hier ist’s getan;
Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.
(‘Everything that passes is but a parable. The unfulfilled is
fulfilled. What cannot be described is made real as eternal
womanliness leads us upwards.)
Eternal womanliness or, if you like, the redeeming
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woman, is a recurrent theme in Wagner’s operas, indeed
it threads its way through much 19th-century German
music. (Both Liszt’s A Faust Symphony and Mahler’s
mighty Eighth end with a choral setting of this very
passage from Goethe.) Truth to tell, Wagner’s earliest
attempts at the redeeming woman are a little too goodygoody for their own good and it’s their wicked sisters
who get the blood racing. Senta, in Der Fliegende
Höllander, sometimes seems a hysterical schoolgirl who’s
spent too long mooning over pictures of mysterious sea
captain in her bedroom. While Elsa is such a silly goose –
or should that be swan? Brunettes such as Ortrud have all
the fun in Lohengrin. As for Tannhäuser would you rather
dally for an hour or so with the voluptuous Venus on her
mountain or join the chaste chatelaine of the Wartburg?
Poor Elisabeth, condemned to lead a virtuous life, all
heart and no body as she waits for her knight in shining
armour to repent his sensual ways.
As always in Wagner, the music tells a rather better story
than the libretto. Dramatic sopranos have always known
how to extract the best from Elisabeth’s opening aria
‘Dich, teure Halle’; it really puts the singer on her mettle.
That bubbling little introduction as she runs into the great
Hall of the Minnesingers and then four bars sung in a
single breath that demands a flawless legato. It’s also
allegro, and woe betide the conductor who dawdles as
his Elisabeth turns to melancholy thoughts as she reflects
on Tannhäuser’s departure. (Musically speaking, we’ve
already heard him playing footsie with the violins). The
extended phrase ‘Aus mir entfloh der Frieden’ (Peace
forsook me) not only rises for from a mournful
Notes
pianissimo, but should sound as if sung on a single note.
Then all is hope and happiness, the woman becomes a
giddy girl again awaiting the knight of her dreams in his
hall, their hall apostrophised in the repeated final phrase
of the aria ‘Du, teure Halle, sei mir gegrüsst’ (Dearest
hall, I greet you).
Notice what has excited Elisabeth in her aria. It’s not
Tannhäuser she’s about to clasp to her heart but the hall
that he has abandoned. She is romancing an inanimate
object, not the man she loves. An interesting
psychological displacement that somehow underscores
the emotional evasion that’s at the heart of the
Wagnerian version of the angel of the hearth. You don’t
hear Venus making love to the Venusberg.
It’s a moot point as to whether Wagner ever managed to
resolve his operatic ambivalence about women.
Brünnhilde comes closest to combining the different
versions of femininity, gloriously human when taking
Siegmund and Sieglinde’s side against her father Wotan
in Die Walküre, an avenging fury in the terrifying trio at
the end of the Second Act of Götterdämmerung and
then the redeemer who returns the Ring to the
Rhinemaidens. (Just what she redeems by her sacrifice is
something of a puzzle!) But when we reach that final
masterpiece Parsifal, we’re back to fallen woman again,
with Parsifal, not Kundry, saving the Kingdom of the
Grail.
And so to the second Richard of the evening, and to the
midnight world of the Decadent movement, and the
19th-century fin de siècle. Whereas Kundry was
Klingsor’s creature, Richard Strauss’s Salome and
Elektra have minds, or at least desires, of their own. They
are sisters of all those chilling belle dames sans merci –
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s luscious late portraits of Jane
Morris toying with a pomegranate say, Klimt’s women
carapaced in their costumes, Gustave Moreau’s
demonic sphinx with her claws into the beautiful boy
Oedipus. And there’s Oscar Wilde’s Salome. There’s a
story that immediately before writing it while he was
visiting Paris, Wilde was reading Psychopathia Sexualis
by the pioneer psychiatrist Richard Krafft-Ebing, a series
of case studies of sexual perversity. Certainly the
character of Salome bears a remarkable similarity to the
subject of Krafft-Ebing’s Case vii, a woman plagued by
an unslakeable lust for a man who cannot respond
because he is a lover of men. The more he loves men, the
more she lusts for him, propelling her into madness.
Not that there’s a hint of the homoerotic in the vicinity of
the young Prinzessin von Judaea and her holy man in
Strauss’s opera. Indeed, in a good production of Salome
– premiered in Dresden in 1905 – what gives the
audience a night and a frisson to remember is the victory
of the profane over the sacred. (The critic William Mann
thought this the most shocking of all 20th-century operas,
but perhaps he didn’t get out that much.) Is that the
import of the Closing Scene of the opera, when Salome
has her man on a silver charger, or rather his head? In a
morally curdled version of the Liebestod that ends
Tristan und Isolde, Strauss gives this monstrous woman
the best and sweetest music, so that we almost forget that
she has quite literally destroyed Jokanaan, and she has
5
Notes
done it by dancing an erotic striptease for her stepfather.
So, at the moment when she kisses the dead prophet’s
mouth, the thing she has yearned for since she first set
eyes on him, eros and thanatos merge, desire becomes
death and death is desire. How else could the opera end
but with the man-slaying heroine crushed to death by
Herod’s soldiers?
This Closing Scene is a challenge for any dramatic
soprano. Strauss said that the role of Salome should be
sung by ‘a 16-year old princess with the voice of an
Isolde’! The world is still looking for that singer. The part is
hard-going, with a cruelly high tessitura, and while there
may be no top Cs, there are plenty of B-flats and Bs. The
role also visits places in the bottom register that most
sopranos would hope to bypass. And all the while, the
heroine has to do battle with a huge orchestra that
includes six horns, four trombones and four trumpets and
an organ and a harmonium in the original version of the
score. The Closing Scene lies in wait for a Salome who is
already weary and yet is now required to produce a
stream of unforced golden tone as she serenades
Jokaanan’s head. By her singing alone she must convince
us that there is beauty in this horror.
It’s no easier for the avenging fury in Elektra, Strauss’s
second operatic success, again given its first
performance in Dresden and just four years after Salome
had scandalised the stuffier corners of well-upholstered
Wilhelmine Germany. By the end of the opera, when she
dances herself to death, Elektra has become another
musical psychopath and the vocal demands are equally
horrific. Ernestine Schumann-Heink (who created the role
6
of Klytemnestra), said of the first production, ‘It was
frightful. We were a set of mad women … There is nothing
beyond Elektra. We have lived and reached the furthest
boundary in dramatic writing for the voice with Wagner.
But Richard Strauss goes beyond him. His singing voices
are lost. We have come to a full stop.’
Much vocally is asked of Klytemnestra and Elektra, but
her sister Chrysothemis is treated more gently – although
this being Strauss, it’s all relative. With these sisters we
have, in a sense, returned to earlier representations of
women as the good wife and the fallen woman, except
that Elektra is hell bent on revenge for the murder of her
father Agamemnon and, however much she yearns for
home and hearth, Chrysothemis lives equally under the
tyranny of their mother Klytemnestra and her paramour
Aegisth. In ‘Ich kann nicht sitzen’ she sings about the
burning fire within her, consumed as she is by a longing
for love and yearning for children, but it’s a fire that must
lie low as she warns her sister that Klytemnestra has
further humiliations and punishments in store. Strauss
composes very different music for the sisters. Elektra’s is
packed with jagged dissonances, Chrysothemis is treated
more lightly, the music is rounded and softer, ‘lighter and
more lyrical in expression’ as the critic Richard Osborne
puts it.
For all this, Chrysothemis is something of a goody-goody,
frightened to be in the same place as her indomitable
mother. Yet after ‘Ich kann nicht sitzen’, in the second
encounter between the sisters when Elektra tries to
persuade Chrysothemis to join her in killing their mother
and her lover, it’s the closest thing to a seduction in the
Notes
opera. Did the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose
original play provided Strauss with his libretto,
understand better than most the erotic threads that
bound together the domestic goddess and the avenging
harpy? The great Recognition scene when Elektra
realises that her long awaited brother Orest has returned
that too can be heard as a kind of a love duet. And is the
final killing dance another psychopathic version of
Wagner’s Liebestod?
When Strauss and Hofmannsthal revisited the aftermath
of the Trojan War in Die Aegyptische Helena (premiered
in 1928) it was after another European war and much
had changed. The old Imperial order had passed in
Germany; women had escaped the home and now did
men’s jobs. In recognition of their contribution, they were
given the vote towards the end of the war. When peace
returned and politics had begun to stabilise under the
new Weimar Constitution and hyperinflation retreated it
was supposed to be ‘back to normal’ in Germany as
elsewhere in Europe. And that’s what Die Aegyptische
Helena gently, and lyrically ironises.
The opera takes place after Troy has fallen. Menelaus
has killed Paris and recovered Helen, the cause of all the
trouble. Now he is determined to get her home to Sparta
and make her pay for what she has done. Helen must
die. But a suitably operatic storm shipwrecks the king and
his disgraced consort in Egypt and everything changes.
Hofmannsthal’s libretto mistakes whimsy for profundity.
Michael Kennedy observes in his biography of Richard
Strauss that the composer may have hoped that he’d
written ‘the Offenbach Belle Hélène of the 20th century,
whereas Hofmannsthal’s fatal penchant for mythological
philosophising took command.’ A conscious choice by
the librettist. In an essay on the genesis of the opera
Hofmannsthal deliberately turns his back on
psychological naturalism. ‘Let us make mythological
operas; it is the truest of all forms.’ However this
particular ‘truest of all forms’ keeps tripping over its own
plot, which includes an omniscient singing mussel.
Nevertheless, Strauss invests the libretto with some of his
most luscious music.
Back to the plot ... shipwrecked in Egypt Menelaus is
fooled into thinking that the Greeks have fallen victim to a
tragic delusion. Helen never went to Troy but remained
safe in Egypt for ten years in a deep slumber. Now she is
awake and ready for love with her Prince. Act Two begins
with a passionate extended soliloquy for Helen glorying
in a second wedding night ‘Zweite Braut nacht’. Here is
one of Strauss’s most glorious outpourings for soprano. ‘I
guard him, glistening in the golden tent, above the sunlit
world’ and the vocal line soars away, teasing us with a
high C, as Helen stretches out the word ‘leuch’
ecstatically.
This is a wife celebrating a second honeymoon. We have,
it seems, come full circle from Beethoven’s Leonora. Not
quite a circle, more an ellipse really since Helen isn’t
really in the rescuing business. But what Strauss and
Hofmannsthal offer us is an image of a woman who is
wife and, if one may use the word in these ‘correct’ times,
a mistress. Hearth and Street are one. And redemption?
That’s for the gods.
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Texts and translations
RICHARD WAGNER
Tannhäuser – Dich, teure Halle
Dich, teure Halle, grüss ich wieder,
froh grüss ich dich, geliebter Raum!
In dir erwachen seine Lieder
und wecken mich aus düstrem Traum.
Da er aus dir geschieden,
wie öd erschienst du mir!
Aus mir entfloh der Frieden,
die Freude zog aus dir!
Wie jetzt mein Busen hoch sich hebet,
so scheinst du jetzt mir stolz und hehr,
der mich und dich so neu belebet,
nicht weilt er ferne mehr!
Sei mir gegrüsst!
Sei mir gegrüsst!
Du, teure Halle,
Sei mir gegrüsst!
Die Walküre – Du bist der Lenz
Sieglinde
Du bist der Lenz,
nach dem ich verlangte
in frostigen Winters Frist.
Dich grüsste mein Herz
mit heiligem Graun,
als dein Blick zuerst mir erblühte.
Fremdes nur sah ich von je,
freundlos war mir das Nahe;
als hätt’ ich nie es gekannt,
war, was immer mir kam.
Doch dich kannt’ ich
deutlich und klar:
als mein Auge dich sah,
warst du mein Eigen;
was im Busen ich barg,
was ich bin,
hell wie der Tag
taucht’ es mir auf,
wie tönender Schall
schlug’s an mein Ohr,
als in frostig öder Fremde
zuerst ich den Freund ersah.
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Dear hall, I greet thee once again,
joyfully I greet thee, beloved place!
In thee his songs will waken
and rouse me from gloomy dreams.
When he departed from thee,
how desolate thou didst appear to me!
Peace forsook me,
joy took leave of thee.
How strongly now my heart is leaping;
to me now thou dost appear exalted and sublime.
He who thus revives both me and thee,
tarries afar no more.
I greet thee!
I greet thee!
Thou, precious hall,
receive my greeting!
You are the Spring
for which I longed
in the frosty winter season.
My heart greeted you
with holy terror
when your first glance set me on fire.
I had only ever seen strangers;
my surroundings were friendless.
Like an unknown quantity
was everything that came my way.
But I recognised you
plain and clear;
when my eyes saw you
you belonged to me.
What I hid in my heart,
what I am,
bright as day
it came to me;
like a resounding echo
it fell upon my ear,
when cold, lonely and estranged
I first saw my friend.
Translation by William Mann © EMI Records Ltd
Texts and translations
RICHARD STRAUSS
Die Aegyptische Helena – Zweite Braut Nacht
Helena
Zweite Brautnacht!
Zaubernacht,
überlange!
Dort begonnen,
hier beendet:
Götterhände
hielten das Frühlicht
nieder in Klüften;
spät erst jäh
aufflog die Sonne
dort überm Berg!
Perlen des Meeres,
Sterne der Nacht
salbten mit Licht
diesen Leib.
Überblendet
von der Gewalt
wie eines Kindes
bebte das schlachterzogene Herz!
Knabenblicke
aus Heldenaugen
zauberten mich
zum Mädchen um:
zum Wunder ward ich mir selbst,
zum Wunder, der mich umschlang.
Aber im Nahkampf
der liebenden Schwäne
des göttlichen Schwanen Kind
siegte über den sterblichen Mann!
Unter dem Fittich
schlief er mir ein,
Als meinen Schatz
hüte ich ihn
funkelnd im goldnen Gezelt
über der leuchtenden Welt.
Second bridal night,
magic night,
extended magic night!
There it began,
here ended:
godly hands
held the dawn
down in the crevices;
it was late when
the sun first flew up
suddenly over that mountain!
Pearls of the sea,
stars of night,
anointed my body
with light.
Overwhelmed
by their power,
like a child’s
the battle-raised heart trembled!
Boyish glances
from a hero’s eyes
transformed me
again into a maiden,
into the wonder I myself became,
into the wonder of he who embraced me.
But in the contest of
the loving swans,
it was the child of the divine swan
that triumphed over the mortal man!
Under my wings
he slept.
There like my treasure
I guard him,
glistening in the golden tent,
above the sunlit world.
Translation by Gila Fox © Telarc
Please turn the page quietly
9
Texts and translations
Elektra – Ich kann nicht sitzen
Chrysothemis
Ich kann nicht sitzen und ins Dunkel starren wie du.
Ich hab’s wie Feuer in der Brust,
es treibt mich immerfort herum im Haus,
in keiner Kammer leidet’s mich,
ich muss von einer Schwelle auf die andre, ach!
treppauf, treppab, mir ist, als rief’ es mich, und komm’ ich
hin, so stiert ein leeres Zimmer mich an.
Ich habe solche Angst,
mir zittern die Knie bei Tag und Nacht,
mir ist die Kehle wie zugeschnürt, ich kann nicht einmal
weinen, wie Stein ist alles!
Schwester, hab Erbarmen!
I cannot sit and stare into the darkness like you.
In my breast there is a burning fire that sends me wandering
endlessly round the house.
I cannot bear to stay in any room,
I must go from one doorway to another; ah!
Upstairs and down, it is as if something were calling me, and
when I go in, an empty room gapes back at me,
I am so afraid,
my knees shake night and day;
my throat is choked, I cannot even weep,
it is as if everything were stone!
Sister, have pity!
Elektra
Mit wem?
On whom?
Chrysothemis
Du bist es, die mit Eisenklammern mich
an den Boden schmiedet. Wärst nicht du,
sie liessen uns hinaus. Wär’ nicht dein Hass,
dein schlafloses, unbändiges Gemüt,
vor dem sie zittern, ach, so liessen sie
uns ja heraus aus diesem Kerker, Schwester!
Ich will heraus! Ich will nicht jede Nacht
bis an den Tod hier schlafen! Eh’ ich sterbe,
will ich auch leben!
Kinder will ich haben, bevor mein Leib verwelkt,
und wär’s ein Bauer,
dem sie mich geben, Kinder will ich ihm
gebären und mit meinem Leib sie wärmen
in kalten Nächten, wenn der Sturm
die Hütte zusammenschüttelt!
Hörst du mich an? Sprich zu mir, Schwester!
It is you who fix me to the ground
with iron clamps. If it were not for you,
they would let us go. Were it not for your
hate, your unsleeping, uncontrollable spirit,
which they fear; then they would let us out of this
prison, sister!
I want out! I will not sleep here
every night until I die! Before I die
I want to live!
I want to have children, before my body shrivels up,
and even if it were a peasant
they gave me to, I would bear him children
and warm them with my body
on cold nights,
when the storms shake the hut!
Are you listening to me? Speak to me, sister!
Elektra
Armes Geschöpf!
Poor creature!
Chrysothemis
Hab Mitleid mit dir selber und mir mir!
Wem frommt denn solche Qual?
Der Vater, der ist tot. Der Bruder kommt nicht heim.
Immer sitzen wir auf der Stange
wie angehängte Vögel, wenden links
und rechts den Kopf, und niemand kommt, kein Bruder,
kein Bote von dem Bruder, nicht der Bote
von einem Boten, nichts! Mit Messern
Have pity on yourself and on me!
Who profits from such torment?
Our brother is dead. Our brother is not coming back.
We sit for ever like caged birds
on a perch, turning our heads
from left to right, and no one comes, no brother:
no messenger from our brother, no messenger
from a messenger: nothing! One day after
10
Texts and translations
gräbt Tag um Tag in dein und mein Gesicht
sein Mal, und draussen geht die Sonne auf und
ab, und Frauen, die ich schlank gekannt hab’,
sind schwer von Segen, mühn sich zum Brunnen,
heben kaum die Eimer, und auf einmal
sie sie entbunden ihrer Last, kommen
zum Brunnen wieder und aus ihnen selber
quillt süsser Trank, und säugend hängt ein Leben
an ihnen, und die Kinder werden gross –
Nein, ich bin
ein Weib und will ein Weiberschicksal.
Viel lieber tot, als leben und nicht leben.
another is engraved in your face and mine
and outside the sun rises and sets
and women, whom I have known slim,
are heavy with blessings, they drag themselves to the well,
can hardly lift the buckets and all at once
they are freed of their burden: they come again to the well
and out of them
flows a sweet drink, and a living creature clings to them,
sucking, and the children grow big –
No, I am a woman
and want a woman’s lot. Far better
to be dead than to be alive and not live.
Translation by G. M Holland and Kenneth Chalmers
© Decca Record Company Ltd
INTERVAL
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Fidelio – Abscheulicher
Leonora
Abscheulicher! Wo eilst du hin?
Was hast du vor in wildem Grimme?
Des Mitleids Ruf, der Menschheit Stimme,
rührt nichts mehr deinen Tigersinn?
Doch toben auch wie Meereswogen
dir in der Seele Zorn und Wut,
so leuchtet mir ein Farbenbogen,
der hell auf dunklen Wolken ruht:
der blickt so still, so friedlich nieder,
der spiegelt alte Zeiten wider,
und neu besänftigt wallt mein Blut.
Komm, Hoffnung, lass den letzten Stern
der Müden nicht erbleichen!
O komm, erhell mein Ziel, sei’s noch so fern,
die Liebe wird’s erreichen.
Ich folg dem innern Triebe,
ich wanke nicht,
mich stärkt die Pflicht
der treuen Gattenliebe!
O du, für den ich alles trug,
könnt’ ich zur Stelle dringen,
wo Bosheit dich in Fesseln schlug,
und süssen Trost dir bringen!
Monster! Where are you hastening?
What savage cruelty have you planned?
The call of pity, the voice of humanity –
does nothing touch your tiger’s heart?
Though fury and rage surge
in your blood like stormy waves,
for me a rainbow shines,
showing bright against the storm-clouds:
it looks down on me in peace and calm,
recalling days gone by
and soothes my fevered soul.
Come, hope, let your last star
not be eclipsed in despair!
O come, light me my goal, however far,
that love may attain it.
I follow a voice within me,
unwavering,
and am strengthened
by the faith of wedded love.
O you, for whom I’ve borne so much,
could I but reach the place
where malice has imprisoned you,
to bring you consolation!
Translation © Lionel Salter
Please turn the page quietly
11
Texts and translations
RICHARD STRAUSS
Salome – Closing Scene
Salome
Ah! Du wolltest mich nicht deinen Mund
küssen lassen, Jokanaan!
Wohl, ich werde ihn jetzt küssen.
Ich will mit meinen Zähnen hineinbeissen,
wie man in eine reife Frucht beissen mag.
Ja, ich will ihn jetzt küssen, deinen Mund, Jokanaan.
Ich hab’ es gesagt.
Hab’ ich’s nicht gesagt?
Ja, ich hab’ es gesagt.
Ah! Ah! Ich will ihn jetzt küssen …
Aber warum siehst du mich nicht an, Jokanaan?
Deine Augen, die so schrecklich waren,
so voller Wut und Verachtung,
sind jetzt geschlossen.
Warum sind sie geschlossen?
Offne doch die Augen,
erhebe deine Lider, Jokanaan!
Warum siehst du mich nicht an?
Hast du Angst vor mir, Jokanaan,
dass du mich nicht ansehen willst?
Und deine Zunge, sie spricht kein Wort,
Jokanaan, diese Scharlachnatter,
die ihren Geifer gegen mich spie.
Es ist seltsam, nicht?
Wie kommt es, dass diese rote Natter
sich nicht mehr rührt?
Du sprachst böse Worte gegen mich,
gegen mich, Salome,
die Tochter der Herodias,
Prinzessin von Judäa.
Nun wohl! Ich lebe noch, aber du bist tot,
und dein Kopf, dein Kopf gehört mir!
Ich kann mit ihm tun, was ich will.
Ich kann ihn den Hunden vorwerfen
und den Vögeln der Luft.
Was die Hunde übriglassen,
sollen die Vögel der Luft verzehren …
Ah! Ah! Jokanaan, Jokanaan,
du warst schön.
Dein Leib war eine Elfenbeinsäule
auf silbernen Füssen.
Er war ein Garten voller Tauben
in der Silberlilien Glanz.
Nichts in der Welt war so weiss wie dein Leib.
12
Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me
to kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan.
Well, I will kiss it now.
I will bite it with my teeth
as one bites a ripe fruit.
Yes, I will kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan.
I said it:
did I not say it?
Yes, I said it.
Ah! ah! I will kiss it now …
But, wherefore dost thou not look at me, Jokanaan?
Thine eyes that were so terrible,
so full of rage and scorn,
are shut now.
Wherefore are they shut?
Open thine eyes!
Lift up thine eyelids, Jokanaan!
Wherefore dost thou not look at me?
Art thou afraid of me, Jokanaan,
that thou wilt not look at me?
And thy tongue, it says nothing now,
Jokanaan, that scarlet viper
that spat its venom upon me.
It is strange, is it not?
How is it that the red viper
stirs no longer?
Thou didst speak evil words against me,
me, Salome,
daughter of Herodias,
Princess of Judaea!
Well, Jokanaan, I still live, but thou, thou art dead,
and thy head belongs to me.
I can do with it what I will.
I can throw it to the dogs
and to the birds of the air.
That which the dogs leave,
the birds of the air shall devour …
Ah! Jokanaan, Jokanaan,
thou were beautiful.
Thy body was a column of ivory
set on a silver socket.
It was a garden full of doves
and of silver lilies.
There was nothing in the world so white as thy body.
Texts and translations
Nichts in der Welt war so schwarz wie dein Haar.
In der ganzen Welt
war nichts so rot wie dein Mund.
Deine Stimme war ein Weihrauchgefäss,
und wenn ich dich ansah,
hörte ich geheimnisvolle Musik …
There was nothing in the world so black as thy hair.
In the whole world
there was nothing so red as thy mouth.
Thy voice was a censer,
and when I looked on thee
I heard a strange music …
Ah! Warum hast du mich nicht angesehen, Jokanaan?
Du legtest über deine Augen die Binde eines,
der seinen Gott schauen wollte.
Wohl! Du hast deinen Gott gesehn, Jokanaan,
aber mich, mich hast du nie gesehn.
Hättest du mich gesehn,
du hättest mich geliebt!
Ich dürste nach deiner Schönheit.
Ich hungre nach deinem Leib.
Nicht Wein noch Äpfel
können mein Verlangen stillen …
Was soll ich jetzt tun, Jokanaan?
Nicht die Fluten, noch die grossen Wasser
können dieses brünstige Begehren löschen …
Oh! Warum sahst du mich nicht an?
Hättest du mich angesehn,
du hättest mich geliebt.
Ich weiss es wohl, du hättest mich geliebt.
Und das Geheimnis der Liebe
ist grosser als das Geheimnis des Todes …
Ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me, Jokanaan?
Thou didst put upon thine eyes the covering of him
who would see his God.
Well, thou hast seen thy God, Jokanaan,
but me, me, me, thou didst never see.
If thou hadst seen me
thou wouldst have loved me.
I am athirst for thy beauty;
I am hungry for thy body.
Neither wine nor fruits
can appease my desire …
What shall I do now, Jokanaan?
Neither the floods nor the great waters
can quench my passion.
Oh! wherefore didst thou not look at me, Jokanaan?
If thou hadst looked at me
thou wouldst have loved me.
Well I know that you wouldst have loved me.
And the mystery of love
is greater than the mystery of death …
Ah! Ich habe deinen Mund geküsst, Jokanaan.
Ah! Ich habe ihn geküsst deinen Mund,
es war ein bitterer Geschmack
auf deinen Lippen.
Hat es nach Blut geschmeckt? Nein!
Doch es schmeckte vielleicht nach Liebe …
Sie sagen, dass die Liebe bitter schmecke …
Allein, was tut’s? Was tut’s?
Ich habe deinen Mund geküsst, Jokanaan.
Ich habe ihn geküsst, deinen Mund.
Translation by Hedwig Lachmann
Ah! I have kissed thy mouth, Jokanaan.
Ah! I have kissed thy mouth.
There was a bitter taste
on thy lips.
Was it the taste of blood? No!
But perchance it is the taste of love …
They say that love hath a bitter taste …
But what of that? What of that?
I have kissed thy mouth, Jokanaan.
I have kissed thy mouth.
Text by Oscar Wilde
13
About the performers
Dario Acosta
Deborah Voigt
soprano
Asher Fisch
conductor
Deborah Voigt has sung in
Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde,
Die Walküre, Der Fliegende
Holländer, Tannhäuser and
Lohengrin and in Strauss’s
Ariadne auf Naxos, Die
Aegyptische Helena, Elektra,
Der Rosenkavalier and
Salome.
This season she made her role
debut in the title-role in
Ponchielli’s La Gioconda at the Metropolitan Opera.
Other American opera engagements this season have
included her first performances as Isolde with the Lyric
Opera of Chicago and a concert at Carnegie Hall of
popular and traditional Christmas music.
Her performances worldwide include Fidelio with the
Vienna State Opera on tour in Japan, and Salome in
Vienna, Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera at the Opéra de
Paris and Puccini’s Tosca at the Royal Opera House.
Highlights last season include her first performances at
the Metropolitan Opera as Isolde, and the role of the
Empress in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Lyric
Opera of Chicago. Other roles include Amelia, Aida,
Lady Macbeth, Tosca, and Leonora (in both La forza
del destino and Il trovatore),and Cassandre in Berlioz’s
Les Troyens.
Deborah Voigt’s discography includes many major
operas, including Tristan und Isolde, Les Troyens and
Die Frau ohne Schatten. Her solo recital discs include
All My Heart, featuring American music, and the bestselling Obsessions, with arias and scenes by Wagner
and Strauss.
Her numerous awards and honours include first prizes in
Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition and Philadelphia’s
Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition, and
France’s Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
She was Musical America’s Vocalist of the Year in 2003
and received a 2007 Opera News Award.
14
Asher Fisch began his career
as Daniel Barenboim’s
assistant at the Berlin
Staatsoper and is also an
accomplished pianist.
Having established a name for
himself in opera, particularly
Wagner, he is increasingly in
demand in orchestral
repertoire. Next season he
makes his debut with the Berlin
Philharmonic as well as conducting concerts in Naples,
Genoa, Bologna and Kansas City, while in opera he will
appear with the Vienna State Opera for Falstaff and
Der Rosenkavalier and the Bavarian State Opera for
works including Pfitzner’s Palestrina, and in Seattle for
Tristan und Isolde.
He has conducted repertoire ranging from Mozart to
Berg in the leading opera houses of Europe, including
those in Milan, Vienna, Paris, Munich, Dresden,
Hamburg, Leipzig and London. His gala concert
celebrating the Royal Opera House’s golden jubilee was
recorded, and his discography also includes Wagner’s
Ring cycle. After making his American debut with Los
Angeles Opera in 1995 he has since conducted at the
Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and
Houston Grand Opera.
In concert he has conducted the symphony orchestras of
Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas,
Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, Saint Louis, Toronto, Montreal,
Minnesota and the National Symphony in Washington.
Elsewhere, Asher Fisch has appeared regularly with the
Munich Philharmonic and has also conducted the
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Orchestre National de
France, NHK Tokyo and the Staatskapelle Dresden,
which he led on an acclaimed tour of Italy in 2002.
His tenure as Music Director of the Vienna Volksoper
included an acclaimed production of Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg and the Viennese premiere of Zemlinsky’s
Der König Kandaules.
About the performers
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is widely regarded as
one of the world’s leading orchestras, but there is much
more to its activities than simply giving concerts. These
include a groundbreaking education and community
programme, a record company, a music education
centre, innovative work in the field of information
technology and much more.
More than 100 years after it was formed, the LSO
continues to attract excellent players, many of whom
have flourishing solo, chamber music and teaching
careers alongside their orchestral work. The LSO’s roster
of soloists and conductors is second to none, starting
with Principal Conductor Valery Gergiev, LSO President
Sir Colin Davis, and Daniel Harding and Michael Tilson
Thomas as Principal Guest Conductors.
The LSO is proud to be Resident Orchestra at the
Barbican, presenting over 70 concerts a year here to its
London audiences, and has thrived on the stability its
permanent home has offered since 1982. In addition, the
Orchestra has a unique successful annual residency at
Lincoln Center, New York, and is the international
resident orchestra of La Salle Pleyel in Paris, also
appearing regularly in Japan and the Far East, as well
as in all the major European cities.
The LSO is set apart from other international orchestras
by the depth of its commitment to music education,
reaching over 40,000 people each year. This season LSO
Discovery, the Orchestra’s education and community
programme, has launched two new initiatives with its
partners the Barbican and Guildhall School: LSO On
Track, a long-term investment in young musicians in East
London; and its Centre for Orchestra, focusing on
orchestral training, research and the professional
development of orchestral musicians.
The award-winning LSO Live is currently the most
successful label of its kind in the world. There are now
over 60 LSO Live releases available globally on CD,
SACD and via digital music services.
LSO St Luke’s is the home of LSO Discovery, providing a
unique mix of public and private events for all types for
music lovers. Through the technological facilities at LSO
St Luke’s, the Orchestra’s education initiatives can be
offered regionally, nationally and internationally. In
addition, LSO St Luke’s works with key artistic partners to
present a varied programme of evening and daytime
events, including BBC Radio 3 and TV, Barbican and the
Guildhall School.
Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Sharp Print Limited;
advertising by Cabbell (tel. 020 8971 8450)
Please make sure that all digital watch alarms and mobile phones are switched
off during the performance. In accordance with the requirements of the licensing
authority, sitting or standing in any gangway is not permitted. Smoking is not
permitted anywhere on the Barbican premises. No eating or drinking is allowed
in the auditorium. No cameras, tape recorders or any other recording equipment
may be taken into the hall.
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Administration 020 7638 4141
Box Office 020 7638 8891
Great Performers Last-Minute Concert
Information Hotline 0845 120 7505
www.barbican.org.uk
15
Violin 1
Carmine Lauri leader
Lennox Mackenzie
Robin Brightman
Nicholas Wright
Nigel Broadbent
Ginette Decuyper
Jörg Hammann
Michael Humphrey
Laurent Quenelle
Harriet Rayfield
Colin Renwick
Ian Rhodes
Naoko Miyamoto
Helena Smart
Violin 2
David Alberman
Thomas Norris
Sarah Quinn
Miya Ichinose
David Ballesteros
Philip Nolte
Paul Robson
Stephen Rowlinson
Norman Clarke
Caroline Frenkel
Barbican Centre Board
Chairman
Jeremy Mayhew
Deputy Chairman
Catherine McGuiness
Board Members
John Barker OBE
Christine Cohen OBE
Tom Hoffman
Roly Keating
Lesley King-Lewis
Sir Brian McMaster
Wendy Mead
Joyce Nash OBE
Barbara Newman CBE
John Owen-Ward MBE
Andrew Parmley
Christoper Purvis CBE
Sue Robertson
Keith Salway
John Tomlinson
Clerk to the Board
Sureka Perera
Oriana Kriszten
Alina Petrenko
Viola
Edward Vanderspar
Heather Wallington
Richard Holttum
Jonathan Welch
Gina Zagni
Michelle Bruil
Elizabeth Butler
Caroline O'Neill
Fiona Opie
Anna Dorothea Vogel
16
Flute
Ileana Ruhemann
Siobhan Grealy
Piccolo
Philip Rowson
Cello
Rebecca Gilliver
Alastair Blayden
Jennifer Brown
Mary Bergin
Noel Bradshaw
Daniel Gardner
Keith Glossop
Minat Lyons
Oboe
David Theodore
John Lawley
Rachel Ingleton
Artistic Director
Graham Sheffield
Finance and Strategic
Planning Director
Sandeep Dwesar
Commercial and
Buildings Director
Mark Taylor
Development Director
Barbara Davidson
Personal Assistant to
Sir Nicholas Kenyon
Ali Ribchester
Head of
Communications
Leonora Thomson
Associate Music
Programmer
Chris Sharp
Programming Associate
Marie McPartlin
Programming
Consultant
Angela Dixon
Programming
Assistants
Katy Morrison
Merwynne Jones
Concerts Planning
Manager
Frances Bryant
Music Administrator
Thomas Hardy
Head of Marketing and
New Media
Chris Denton
Marketing Campaign
Managers
Bethan Sheppard
Greg Fearon
Marketing Assistant
Jessica Tomkins
Barbican Music
Department
Head of Music and
Arts Projects
Robert van Leer
Executive Producer
Barbican Directorate
Managing Director
Sir Nicholas Kenyon
Double Bass
Colin Paris
Patrick Laurence
Thomas Goodman
Jani Pensola
David Brown
Simo Vaisanen
Vicky Cheetham
Music Programmers
Gijs Elsen
Bryn Ormrod
Cor anglais
Christine Pendrill
Clarinet
Andrew Marriner
Sarah Thurlow
E flat Clarinet
Chi-Yu Mo
Bass Trombone
Paul Milner
Bassoon
Rachel Gough
Joost Bosdijk
Tuba
Patrick Harrild
Contrabassoon
Dominic Morgan
Timpani
Nigel Thomas
Antoine Bedewi
Horn
David Pyatt
Angela Barnes
John Ryan
Jonathan Lipton
Tim Ball
Brendan Thomas
Percussion
Neil Percy
David Jackson
Stephen Henderson
Tom Edwards
Jeremy Wiles
Christopher Thomas
Trumpet
Philip Cobb
Gerald Ruddock
Nigel Gomm
Niall Keatley
Harp
Bryn Lewis
Karen Vaughan
Keyboard
John Alley
Trombone
Dudley Bright
Rebecca Smith
Media Relations
Managers
Alex Webb
Annikaisa Vainio
Media Relations
Officers
Rupert Cross
Anna Omakinwa
Events Producer
Kat Johnson
Production Managers
Eddie Shelter
Jessica Buchanan-Barrow
Alison Cooper
Claire Corns
Kate Packham
Fiona Todd
Company Production
Manager
Rachel Smith
Technical Managers
Jasja van Andel
Ingo Reinhardt
Technical Supervisors
Mark Bloxsidge
Steve Mace
Technicians
Maurice Adamson
Jason Kew
Sean McDill
Martin Shaw
Tom Shipman
Associate Producer
Elizabeth Burgess
Stage Managers
Christopher Alderton
Julie-Anne Bolton
Platform Supervisor
Paul Harcourt
Senior Stage Assistants
Andy Clarke
Hannah Wye
Stage Assistants
Ademola Akisanya
Michael Casey
Robert Rea
Danny Harcourt
Producing
Administrator
Colette Chilton