a recurring theme

[totient]

Twice in the last few days I've had conversations in which I wanted to argue that Ariadne auf Naxos was a requiem for classical music, but been unable to remember the name of the opera. So here it is.

Comments

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll bite. Why?

I don't know the opera, but I love Strauss in general, and having read the synopsis on Wikipedia, I would love to see a performance. But what makes it a requiem for classical music? There was a whole lot of classical music subsequent to this: Mahler, for instance. Or do you mean classical in the sense of Mozart being classical while Beethoven was Romantic?

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Ariadne auf Naxos is squarely Romantic, too, and it was hardly Strauss' last opera. Nor is it even the most recently composed Romantic opera in common performance; that title probably belongs to Turandot, which also uses the cultural-antiquity tropes that I think of as a defining characteristic of classicism. But the outer conflict between the Composer and Zerbinetta and the parallel inner conflict between old and new gods (for the Composer) and lovers (for Zerbinetta) are all, or so I would have argued if I'd had reference material to hand as I do now, a lament that World War I -- in its methods as much as its effects -- has brought a crashing end to the Romantic era. It's nicely summed up, I think, by Zerbinetta, who gets the last words: "Kommt der neue Gott gegangen, Hingegeben sind wir stumm!"