Looking Backward

The early 20th century is often thought of as a time of musical modernism, when composers drew on harsh sounds and strange forms to express new ideas. Yet another important musical trend from the first decades of the century involved looking backward, specifically reconsidering genres and styles from earlier time periods, from medieval chant to Baroque cantatas to Classical concertos. Ariadne auf Naxos participates in this trend in several ways, revealing Richard Strauss as a composer consciously engaged in, and even predicting, changing musical tastes. Ariadne is not the first of Strauss’s operas to look backward both in its musical style and story—the composer’s Der Rosenkavalier also experiments with a story and musical style from the Classical era—but its satire forces us to consider the historical era it depicts in a new light.  

The story of the opera combines two performances of very different types into a single evening. As we learn from the Prologue, there is to be both a burlesque troupe who have prepared a commedia dell’arte–style comic performance—an early form of Italian theater popular in the 16th and 17th centuries—and an opera based on the ancient Greek love story of Ariadne and Bacchus. Although the music is firmly in the late Romantic tradition, the subject matter of the opera recalls composing trends of the pre-Classical period when ancient myths often served as the source material for serious operas.

The music of Ariadne draws its inspiration—and even sometimes its melodies!— from earlier periods. Harlekin’s song at the beginning of the Opera (“Lieben, Hassen, Hoffen, Zagen”) (Track 1 or MOoD clip 22) is inspired by Mozart (the opening theme of the A-Major Piano Sonata, K. 331), and the nymphs’ trio “Töne, töne, süße Stimme” (Track 2 or MOoD clip 30) takes its melody from Schubert (“Schlafe, schlafe, holder, süßer Knabe,” from Wiegenlied, D. 498). The general bel canto style of the operas of Donizetti and Bellini serves as inspiration for Zerbinetta’s coloratura recitative and aria, “Großmächtige Prinzessin” (Track 3 or MOoD clip 25). And the mixture of singing with spoken dialogue accompanied by piano and small orchestra in the Prologue alludes to the Singspiel tradition of early German comic operas.

The setting of the opera itself—the house of a wealthy aristocrat who is able to employ two different ensembles to perform for his guests (and change what is required of these performers at the last minute)—also recalls a means of musical patronage that far preceded Strauss. The 18th century was an era of noble classes and private patronage. Composers and musicians were treated like hired household staff, subject to the entertainment needs and whims of their employers. Franz Joseph Haydn, for instance, spent his entire career in the employment of a single wealthy patron.

The 20th century brought dramatic change to people’s lives: Political upheaval, rapid urban growth, technological development, and an increase in the study and understanding of human psychology all changed daily life in unimaginable ways. Especially following the devastation of the First World War, artists looked back to a “simpler” time for inspiration and as a means of escape; they also used references to the past as a way to make comments about societal issues in their own day. Indeed, Neoclassicism implies much more than a mere re-creation of earlier styles of music. Parody and recontextualization were often part of this movement, and references to the past were not necessarily positive or nostalgic. The backstage chaos and turmoil wreaked by the fickle aristocrat’s last-minute changes, for instance, are a good reminder of how unpleasant the patronage system could be. The basis of Strauss’s opera, the simultaneous combination of two distinct styles of performance, could itself only exist in a 20th-century context.