Just the Two of Us

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte, Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito, perhaps John Adams and Peter Sellars—these are some of the major composer-librettist duos in the history of opera. But perhaps none reaches the duration, variety, and intensity of the collaboration between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose Ariadne auf Naxos was both a triumph and a failure and nearly cost them their artistic partnership.   

Strauss and Hofmannsthal are a study in contrast. The former was good-natured, lighthearted, interested in exploring human dilemmas, and eager to compromise; the latter was gloomy, tortured, obsessed with philosophical and abstract questions, and severely stubborn. Strauss was adamant that audiences understand the work they saw. Hofmannsthal maintained that real art could never be understood by the public. It is perhaps this union of opposites that made for such enduring and fruitful collaboration. The two first began working together shortly after Strauss had seen Hofmannsthal’s play Elektra in 1906, which so impressed the composer that he wrote the playwright asking him “urgently to give me first refusal with anything composable that you write. Your manner has so much in common with mine; we were born for one another and are certain to do fine things together if you remain faithful to me.”

And faithful he was: Hofmannsthal went on to complete librettos for six Strauss operas over the next two decades, including Elektra (1909), Der Rosenkavalier (1911), Ariadne auf Naxos (1912–16), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), Die Ägyptische Helena (1928), and Arabella (1933). The writer himself acknowledged his unusual dedication to the craft of the libretto, which has often been seen as subliterary. “I know that for many generations past no distinguished poet of the rank with which I may credit myself amongst the living, has dedicated himself willingly and devotedly to the task of working for a musician,” he wrote to Strauss in 1911 while the two worked on Ariadne.

The idea for Ariadne auf Naxos originated with Hofmannsthal, who proposed to Strauss that they assemble a two-part work adapted from a German translation of Molière’s play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. In his initial scheme, the first half of the production would be his reworking of the play with some incidental music (but no singing), and the second half would be a divertissement or operetta by the composer. During the early days of the project, both artists seemed to put responsibility for the work’s success on the other’s shoulders. When Strauss wrote his librettist that, “as the dramatic framework is rather thin, everything will depend on the poetic execution,” Hofmannsthal countered by insisting that, “on the contrary, the whole thing is to be simply a framework on which to hang the music, well and prettily.”

This miscommunication between the artists could have spelled disaster for the outcome of Ariadne, until Hofmannsthal came up with a novel idea—that the head of household asks for the comedy and tragedy to be performed simultaneously. Strauss, who had previously indicated that “he was not particularly interested by the whole thing,” was pleased: “In your letter you moot the brilliant idea of preparing the ground for Ariadne by a big scene which would explain and motivate the whole action. That’s excellent.”

With this dramatic structure in place, the two could better complement each other’s visions for the work, at least until they broached the topic of its premiere. Hofmannsthal refused to entertain the possibility that anyone other than Max Reinhardt, to whom Ariadne is dedicated, would produce it and further insisted that it take place in Dresden. When Strauss suggested other options, the librettist took it as a personal slight. “But in this case you should find it possible to disregard everything that matters to me, to disregard all that the realization of this work of my imagination means to me, to force me into a theater where I could not appear without a sense of debasement, this does touch me; the mere idea that you on your part should entertain such a possibility does hurt me, and hurts me more than just momentarily,” Hofmannsthal pleaded. “Here I find myself misunderstood and injured by you at the most vulnerable point in our relationship as artists. I beg of you, do not inflict on me this injury; do not injure us both, do not injure our relationship!”

Ultimately, the playwright ceded his ground, and Ariadne auf Naxos debuted in Stuttgart (though still directed by Reinhardt). The performance was largely a failure due to its excessive length, coming in at more than six hours. Strauss and Hofmannsthal undertook a revision of the work in 1916, resulting in the version we hear today. It is the genius of Ariadne that it expresses, in its form and in its production, the resolution of such conflicting perspectives: the brooding, esoteric librettist and the comic, populist composer. Perhaps the real story of this opera is that of its creators’ profound and unlikely union.