Die Frau ohne Schatten
Content
- Performance information
- In a nutshell
- The story
- Timeline
- Interview with stage director Katie Mitchell
- Background: the layered symbolism of Die Frau ohne Schatten
- Interview with conductor Marc Albrecht
- Background: a musical exploration of Strauss’s masterpiece
- Biographies artistic team
- Biographies singers
Performance information
Voorstellingsinformatie
In a nutshell
About the fourth and most ambitious opera by composer Richard Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, about the return of Marc Albrecht, about an opera often perceived as misogynistic viewed from a female perspective, and about three worlds united in a single opera.
In a nutshell
Ambitious opera
Die Frau ohne Schatten was the fourth opera Richard Strauss composed in collaboration with the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is seen as their most ambitious opera. The work is extravagant in every respect — the complex libretto full of symbolism, Strauss’s score with its wide range of colours, the vast orchestra and huge cast of singers. The pair worked on Die Frau ohne Schatten for longer than any of their other operas. Letters that have survived reveal that Strauss called the opera his “problem child”, as he struggled with setting Hofmannsthal’s complicated libretto to music. Even so, Strauss was able to bring the fairy-tale characters to life musically, drawing inspiration for example from his own marriage for the dyer and his wife.
A familiar face returns
Conductor Marc Albrecht made his debut at Dutch National Opera back in 2008 with an impressive interpretation of Die Frau ohne Schatten. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed chief conductor of Dutch National Opera and the Netherlands Philharmonic, a position he held for no less than ten years. He had wanted to mark his departure in 2020 with a new production of the work he loves so much, but the Covid pandemic put paid to that plan. Now the time has finally arrived: the great Strauss aficionado and expert will guide his former orchestra and an exceptional cast of singers through the score of Die Frau ohne Schatten at Dutch National Opera.
From a female perspective
The libretto of Die Frau ohne Schatten is underpinned by ideas about femininity that many people today will find dated or even misogynistic. The celebrated theatre and opera director Katie Mitchell, known for productions that take a feminist stance, is one of the few women to have directed the opera. She has taken the liberty of not following the libretto slavishly and is presenting the work as a ‘feminist sci-fi thriller’. For example, she gives Barak’s Wife (who remains nameless in the libretto) more sympathy and depth. She also translates the libretto’s fairy-tale element of the shadow as a symbol of fertility into a very realistic situation where ultrasound equipment is used to determine whether or not a woman is pregnant.
Three worlds
Set and costume designer Naomi Dawson has shaped the opera’s three worlds with a filmic, realistic aesthetic. The clinical, modern world of the imperial couple and the grim, violent realm of the humans are stacked as two levels within the same colossal structure. In the third act, the setting shifts to the laboratory-like, bleak underworld ruled by Keikobad — beneath which lies an even darker subterranean floor. This is the domain of mythical human-animal creatures, for whom Dawson created striking, sculptural animal masks.
The story
While out hunting, an emperor killed a gazelle, which then transformed into a woman. This woman is the daughter of Keikobad, the king of the spirit underworld. Even though she is now living in a human body, she does not cast a shadow, which means she is unable to have children. Keikobad gave his daughter one year to acquire a shadow, but she has not managed to conceive yet. The year will expire in three days’ time.
The story
While out hunting, an emperor killed a gazelle, which then transformed into a woman. This woman is the daughter of Keikobad, the king of the spirit underworld. Even though she is now living in a human body, she does not cast a shadow, which means she is unable to have children. Keikobad gave his daughter one year to acquire a shadow, but she has not managed to conceive yet. The year will expire in three days’ time.
I
A messenger of Keikobad reminds the nurse: if the empress does not get pregnant in three days then Keikobad will turn the emperor to stone (put him into a coma in this production). The nurse proposes going to the grey world of the mortals with the empress, where she thinks she may have found a suitable surrogate mother in Barak’s wife, who does posses a shadow. The couple live with Barak’s three brothers. Barak and his wife don’t have children, which is a source of discord in their marriage. The nurse, wielding an arsenal of tempting promises, seeks to convince Barak’s wife to be a surrogate mother and carry the empress’s child.
II
The nurse forces a young man to have sex with Barak’s wife. At the same time, the empress is beginning to wonder whether this is the best way to obtain a child. She feels guilty towards the mortal couple. Now she faces a dilemma: she wants to save their marriage and also her own husband’s life. When Barak’s wife confesses to Barak during yet another quarrel that she has deceived him by wanting to sell her fertility, he tries to kill his wife. Keikobad appears and takes Barak and his wife to the spirit underworld.
III
Now that they have been separated from one another in the spirit underworld, Barak and his wife realise they do want to be together. Also arri-ving in the underworld, the empress breaks with the nurse, who is banished by Keikobad as a punishment for taking the empress to the human world. The empress is given one last chance to obtain the fertility of Barak’s wife, but she refuses to do so even after seeing her husband in a coma. This act of self-sacrifice makes her father, Keikobad, decide to enable her to conceive children after all. Keikobad brings the emperor out of his coma and Barak and his wife are reunited. The voices of both couples’ unborn children can be heard in the distance.
Timeline
The partnership between Strauss and Hofmannsthal.
1864
Richard Strauss is born in Munich. His father, Franz Strauss, is a composer and solo horn player in the court opera orchestra in Munich. In the latter capacity, Franz plays the first horn part in the premieres of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Die Walküre.
1874
Hugo von Hofmannsthal is born, the son of a bank director. He grows up in a sheltered environment and is educated privately.
1882
In the summer, Richard accompanies his father to Bayreuth, where Franz is to play the first horn part in the premiere of Parsifal. Not long afterwards, Richard abandons his university studies in philosophy and art history to dedicate himself to a career in music. He soon obtains positions as chief or assistant conductor in various German theatres.
1890
Hofmannsthal publishes his first poems and builds up a reputation in Viennese literary circles.
1899
Having established himself as a composer with such symphonic poems as Tod und Verklärung and Also sprach Zarathustra, Strauss leaves for Berlin, becoming the conductor of the Berlin Court Opera. He immerses himself in the city’s flourishing cultural scene, where he meets Hugo von Hofmannsthal and others.
1905
Strauss’ third opera, Salome, premieres in Dresden. It is his first major success in the opera genre. That same year, Strauss sees Hofmannsthal’s stage adaption of Elektra. He finds it so inspiring that he decides to take the play as the starting point for his next opera.
1911
While Strauss compiled the libretto for his opera Elektra himself from Hofmannsthal’s script, Der Rosenkavalier, which premieres this same year, is the first real collaboration between the two. One month after the premiere, Hofmannsthal notes down the first ideas for Die Frau ohne Schatten.
1912-1916
The project experiences long delays because of the difficulties Hofmannsthal has in coming up with the libretto for Die Frau ohne Schatten. It ends up being Strauss’ lengthiest project ever. While waiting for new parts of the libretto, Strauss composes four major works, including the opera Ariadne auf Naxos (1913, revised in 1916) and the symphonic poem Eine Alpensinfonie (1915).
1917-1919
In 1917, Strauss completes the musical score for Die Frau ohne Schatten. Two years later, after the end of the First World War (1914-1918), the opera has its premiere at the Vienna State Opera, where Strauss has just been appointed co-director. The opera gets a mixed reception: while the musical splendour evokes admiration, there is confusion and criticism of the complex libretto and technical challenges.
1928
Die ägyptische Helena premieres on 6 June 1928. After Hofmannsthal previously rejected the offer of collaboration on the bourgeois comedy Intermezzo (1924), the partnership between Strauss and the poet is reinstated with this opera, which draws on myths for its narrative.
1929
Shortly after his son commits suicide, Hofmannsthal dies of a heart attack. In a letter to Hofmannsthal’s wife, Strauss writes that no one will be able to replace him, “neither for me, nor for the whole music world.”
1933
When he died, Hofmannsthal was working with Strauss on Arabella, which would be their final collaboration. Although Hofmannsthal was still making major changes to the libretto right up to his death, Strauss decides against handing Hofmannsthal’s work to another librettist and instead sets the available material to music.
1949
Strauss dies on 8 September 1949 in his country house in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
In conversation with Katie Mitchell
After updating Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Katie Mitchell now takes on one of Richard Strauss’s most ambitious operas. For her, there is no doubt that her staging must counteract the misogyny she finds in the libretto. How does Mitchell give contemporary form to this work, which is over a hundred years old?
In conversation with Katie Mitchell
After updating Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Katie Mitchell now takes on one of Richard Strauss’s most ambitious operas. For her, there is no doubt that her staging must counteract the misogyny she finds in the libretto. How does Mitchell give contemporary form to this work, which is over a hundred years old?
Text: Jasmijn van Wijnen
“The way misogyny is embedded at every level in the libretto of Die Frau ohne Schatten is the greatest challenge in creating a new production of this work,” Mitchell says. The British theatre and opera director is known for her innovative and often feminist approaches to the classical repertoire. Her productions are characterised by a psychologically detailed and cinematic approach.
A feminist sci-fi thriller
Mitchell describes her staging of Die Frau ohne Schatten as a feminist sci-fi thriller. “The original story is about a supernatural female character (the Empress) who is unable to have children and tries to persuade a human woman to give up her fertility and transfer it to her. In the staging concept, I have added extra tension and danger to the drama, transforming the opera from a somewhat slow fairy-tale into a fast-paced and violent thriller,” Mitchell explains.
Misogyny is embedded in various aspects of the opera, Mitchell notes. “For example, the libretto places the blame for childlessness entirely on the female partner, without any scientific basis. Additionally, there is an element of ableism [discrimination against people with physical, mental or cognitive disabilities, ed.] in the way Barak’s three brothers are portrayed.”
The director’s interpretation
To address this, Mitchell made several defining artistic choices. First, she decided to focus the staging concept on the father and daughter: Keikobad and the Empress. In the original opera, Keikobad never appears physically; he is only present through his divine influence on events, references to him by other characters and, in the opera’s climax, through his voice. However, Mitchell chooses to place the conflict between father and daughter at the core. She has Keikobad physically present on stage from the very beginning to deliver his ultimatum in person: if the Empress does not obtain a shadow (symbolising fertility) within three days, her husband, the Emperor, will turn to stone. In Mitchell’s production Keikobad observes the events as they unfold, watching his daughter and her Nurse attempt to steal the fertility of another woman, only to punish them harshly — before ultimately revoking his sentence. By keeping Keikobad on stage, his literally patriarchal power is made more explicit than in the original work, where it remains a magical and non-physical presence.
In the original libretto, the character of Barak (the husband of the female human protagonist) is portrayed as a kind-hearted man and his unnamed Wife as a difficult woman. In her approach, Mitchell re-balances the gender roles and shows how both characters are equally responsible for the problems in their marriage, including infertility. She also changes their socio-political context by turning the husband into an impoverished and depressed drug dealer.
Mitchell’s treatment of Barak’s brothers is also in keeping with the grim human world she has created — a setting steeped in drugs, violence and social inequality. Instead of defining them by their physical disabilities, as their character names suggest (One-eye, One-arm and Hunchback), they appear bandaged and bruised, fresh from a fight as drug dealers.
“Nothing is lost in doing so — things are only gained”
Music is never unambiguous in meaning For Mitchell, it is crucial to continue approaching canonical operas with a critical, contemporary eye. “When we drag an opera through time, we not only carry along its beautiful musical leaves and branches but also the poisonous roots of misogyny, racism or ableism from the era in which it was composed,” Mitchell argues. “If we don’t address these toxic roots in our staging, we risk not only allowing the original misogyny to persist but, even worse, actively perpetuating it.”
Katie Mitchell
“When we drag an opera through time, we not only carry along its beautiful musical leaves and branches but also the poisonous roots”
According to Mitchell, the opera’s popularity is primarily due to Strauss’s magnificent music. She remarks, “The opera’s libretto is generally not as celebrated as its music. The dramatic structure is quite uneven. Without the spectacular music, the text alone would never hold up as a play. Adapting the staging to modernise the libretto is essential to keep the opera relevant. Nothing is lost in doing so — things are only gained.”
All of her artistic interventions lie in the realm of design and direction. While she frequently works against the libretto, she never works against the music. “When directing, I connect the actions to the musical texture of the opera. Good music will always remain open to different emotional interpretations.”
The woman without a shadow
Mitchell also makes a clear choice in how she interprets the shadow that the Empress must obtain. “Hofmannsthal uses the central image of the shadow inconsistently. Sometimes it refers to a literal shadow that every human casts, while at other times it is linked to fertility. I make a consistent choice in the production: in all cases, the shadow represents fertility.” Instead of depicting a literal shadow (or its absence), Mitchell presents ultrasound equipment, which makes it possible to visualise the uterus in a very concrete way.
Set and costume designer Naomi Dawson has created an impressively large and detailed set, with apartments on multiple storeys. The top level represents the spirit world, designed with a modern, clinical, sci-fi aesthetic. Below that is the murky, drug- and violence-infested human world. In the third act, a basement level emerges: the dark domain ruled with an iron fist by Keikobad. Here, as in a fever dream, human figures with animal heads appear — a mythical vision closely tied to Keikobad.
By presenting Die Frau ohne Schatten as a feminist sci-fi thriller, Mitchell strips the opera of the fairy-tale veil that once concealed the problematic ideas within the original work. In its place, she offers a gripping, cinematic visual language that resonates more strongly with contemporary audiences.
The complex symbolism of Die Frau ohne Schatten
The dramaturg Klaus Bertisch delves into the underlying layers of this masterpiece by Strauss and Hofmannsthal. Die Frau ohne Schatten is more than just a fairy-tale — it is a story about identity, transformation and the quest for humaneness. This work, with its rich music and complex characters, confronts us with moral choices and deep-rooted desires.
The complex symbolism of Die Frau ohne Schatten
The yearning to be different
The dramaturg Klaus Bertisch delves into the underlying layers of this masterpiece by Strauss and Hofmannsthal. Die Frau ohne Schatten is more than just a fairy-tale — it is a story about identity, transformation and the quest for humaneness. This work, with its rich music and complex characters, confronts us with moral choices and deep-rooted desires.
Original text: Klaus Bertisch
Dutch translation: Jasmijn van Wijnen
The correspondence between the composer Richard Strauss and the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who collaborated on numerous operas, is hugely important in the history of music. The letters bear witness to how their work was created and to the personal contact between the two artists. The history of how Die Frau ohne Schatten came about takes up a significant proportion of the impressive collection of letters. Perhaps this partly reflects how long this troublesome project (or ‘problem child’, as Strauss once called it) took to complete.
The initial ideas arose as early as 1911; a preliminary version of the libretto and sketches for the joint outline followed in 1913, but the process dragged on during the First World War, finally reaching completion in 1917 with a premiere in Vienna in 1919. However, the two artists also had heated discussions about certain substantive choices. The composer himself once said that you cannot really compose music in the same way for “Schatten zu werfen, beide erwählt” (“Both chosen to cast shadows”, the final scene from Die Frau ohne Schatten) as for “Hab mir’s gelobt, ihn lieb zu haben” (“I swore I would love him”, the final scene from Der Rosenkavalier).
Times are different
The technical possibilities nowadays, more than a century since the opera premiered, are radically different. If they had been living in the twenty-first century, Strauss and Hofmannsthal would probably have exchanged most of their information in e-mails, which would undoubtedly have been lost to posterity. It is unlikely we will ever be able to read a volume of collected letters exchanged between the composer Hans Werner Henze and librettist Hans-Ulrich Treichel, or George Benjamin and Martin Crimp, for instance.
The scientific and medical world has changed too. Miraculous pregnancies and conceptions were purely a literary phenomenon even in Hofmannsthal and Strauss’s day. But nowadays, staging the opera demands a new kind of realism of the sort that has mostly been avoided in productions since the premiere. The idea of having a shadow as a symbol of fertility has never become an established concept in the literary canon anyway. That is why it is important these days to make the fairy-tale, mystical aspects more tangible if you want the audience to understand the complex, multi-layered action in the opera — with its many threads, which are moreover peppered with highly sexualised elements.
Fairy-tale-like indefiniteness
It is also crucial to keep in mind that the opera is not set in a clearly defined time. If you look at the information Hofmannsthal gives at the start of his libretto, you will only see a ‘location of the action’; there is no answer to the question of ‘when’. There are hierarchical structures, but there is no clear political context. Who are these people we see here? While the title character and her partner are described only in terms of their status (the Empress, the Emperor), the male character in the couple with which they are contrasted does at least have a name (Barak). His spouse is merely described as “his wife”. Although she has a central dramatic role, she is not defined further.
In the second act, Barak speaks of “today”, thereby making the only specific allusion to time in the whole opera. Naturally, though, a stage director is expected to give a more clearly defined timing of the events. After all, it is these events that determine the state of mind of the characters; what matters is their subsequent emotional state and our human empathy for their circumstances. To give a generic rendition of the plot’s fairy-tale events or position them in some vague nirvana would only lead to misunderstandings and a sense of alienation.
Higher powers at work
The opera deals with an age-old fairy-tale trope, one we encounter in numerous guises through the centuries, from Swan Lake to Rusalka: characters who yearn to be ‘different’ because their current lives are no longer enough for them. There is also inevitably another character who promises the characters in the plot a freedom they cannot imagine given the restrictions they face in their current social environment. A prince yearns for the freedom of the swan because he does not want to be subjected to the restraints imposed on him by his family. A water nymph wants to become and remain human because she was deceived and fell prey to a prince’s promises of love. In Die Frau ohne Schatten, it is a white gazelle who has been turned into a human and wants to remain with her Emperor out of love, but can only do so if she becomes pregnant. These are all unbelievable and implausible happenings – but just imagine the kind of pressure the woman is under in this scenario.
However, this yearning for a different life seems quite modern now, in the first half of the twenty-first century, when we think of today’s young people wrestling with their identity. “Übermächte sind im Spiel” (“Higher powers are at work”) almost seems like an excuse the Nurse is making at the end of the second act. But what are these higher powers? Even in concrete situations, there is often something inexplicable that we simply have to accept. The whole modern-day science fiction industry is based on that principle.
The social status of the makers
It is worthwhile considering the private lives of the authors. Strauss could be described as a down-to-earth person, in part because his mother came from a family of Bavarian brewers and – however musical he may have been – he was never entirely able to shake off those roots.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, on the other hand, was an aesthete with a far greater interest in his social status. In accordance with his position in society, he married a woman from his own circles. Like Hofmannsthal himself, his wife Gerty was the child of a bank director. The poet saw marriage as the cornerstone of social order, but it was not long after his marriage before Hofmannsthal was showing more interest in his male friends than his wife. She was no longer so interesting to him once their bond had been forged, and it seems highly likely that Hofmannsthal had a number of love affairs. His friendship with Strauss was essentially very much a male relationship. The conservative and tradition-conscious poet was a representative of the Austrian Habsburg monarchy and he suffered greatly from the First World War and the fall of ‘his’ empire.
Both artists had offspring. Strauss had a son, Franz, born in 1897, while Hofmannsthal had three children. The middle child, a son, committed suicide ten years after the premiere of Die Frau ohne Schatten. It seems plausible that the overwhelming example of his father had a negative influence on the son, leading him to take the radical decision to end his own life. The suicide was such a dramatic blow for Hofmannsthal that he suffered a heart attack shortly afterwards and passed away only two months after the death of his son. Suicide rates were high anyway in those days. It was a period marked by developments in psychoanalysis; indeed, one of Hofmannsthal’s artistic aims was to incorporate such insights into literature.
The end of an era
All the events in Die Frau ohne Schatten, which are characterised by a vivid fantasy and an overabundance of fairy-tale or even clearly sexual allusions, are undoubtedly underpinned by deeper psychological meanings. You could think here too of Traumnovelle (Dream Story in English), the novella by Hofmannsthal’s literary friend and colleague Arthur Schnitzler, or his drama Liebelei, where the tension between the serious and light-hearted ends in suicide.
But even if such events seem unlikely to us in our empirical times, we should realise that today too we are in a kind of end-of-an-era time not dissimilar to the period preceding, during and following the First World War. The divide between rich and poor — clearly in view in Die Frau ohne Schatten with the contrasting married couples — has rarely been as great as it is now. However, these days we can give scientific interpretations of things that were still in the research or development phase when the opera was being written. Perhaps this will let us explain the many ambiguities in the work that the authors may have felt intuitively without really being able to substantiate them rationally.
That is precisely why the music is so crucial. In his composition, Strauss gives Barak perhaps the most beautiful and harmonious music. Whether that makes him a positive character is open to question. At the end of the work, there is a sweeping quartet for the four main characters that seems almost unwilling to end, in which human suffering is cast out and conquered by exuberant joy. Strauss and Hofmannsthal wanted their opera to be a new Zauberflöte. They took the issue of pregnancy or childlessness to create trials that end with a quest for humaneness. In the finale, the two purified couples celebrate — in a sparkling C major — the values of respect and ‘love thy neighbour’, an ideal of love and humanity that seems almost surprisingly hard fought given what preceded it.
Conductor Marc Albrecht on Die Frau ohne Schatten
Marc Albrecht, former chief conductor of Dutch National Opera and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, returns to Amsterdam in 2025 for a production of Strauss's masterful fairy-tale opera, the same work with which he made his debut here in 2008.
Conductor Marc Albrecht on Die Frau ohne Schatten
Marc Albrecht, former chief conductor of Dutch National Opera and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, returns to Amsterdam in 2025 for a production of Strauss's masterful fairy-tale opera, the same work with which he made his debut here in 2008.
Text: Benjamin Rous
“For me, Die Frau ohne Schatten is above all a world in itself. It is a miraculous work, both in purely musical terms and in how that music merges with Hofmannsthal's libretto, especially dramaturgically. There are an incredible number of new inventions in this opera, new textures that Strauss developed just for this piece.”
“Of course there are passages where the intensity of this enormous orchestra is overwhelming, particularly in some of the magnificent interludes. But in this work Strauss often creates utterly refined chamber-musical moments. Delicate textures and colours come to light beautifully here, more than in his previous operas. Strauss undoubtedly went a step further in purely harmonic terms in Elektra regarding advanced dissonances and polytonality, but his new style of refinement in Die Frau ohne Schatten is an equally important achievement.”
An opera like a kaleidoscope
As in the two operas that preceded Die Frau ohne Schatten – Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos – Strauss seems to have turned his gaze backwards to music history. “Sometimes we recognise the music of earlier centuries, as if shining through a window without Strauss actually quoting it literally. The only real quotation in the opera is the Tristan chord (F-B-D♯-G♯), from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, which pops up at crucial moments, always in its pure form. But we hear it just briefly before it passes by.”
Marc Albrecht
“There are an incredible number of new inventions in this opera”
“Furthermore, there is quite a lot of Bach in this piece, more so than in Strauss' other works. Bach’s influence is also noticeable in the use of counterpoint. Sometimes we hear three musical motifs juxtaposed, sometimes even four, in an extremely masterful way. Strauss also uses the typical Bach technique of augmentation of a musical theme: we hear a subject we already know but now at half — or even a quarter of — the speed. Die Frau ohne Schatten is like a multi-layered kaleidoscope where Strauss's very personal tone fuses with the sounds of earlier times.”
Separate worlds
Early on, Strauss toyed with the idea of using two different orchestras for the spirit world and the world of humans: a small orchestra as in Ariadne auf Naxos and a larger orchestra. However, in the end the composer did not follow through with that idea of divided orchestras. “Strauss found a harmonic solution to that distinction. There are constant tonality changes and much more chromaticism in the dark spirit world, in the music of Keikobad and the Amme. The Amme, for instance, is given a snake-like chromatic theme that is difficult to sing along with and seems to have no tonal centre. Her superhuman nature is evident in the extremely wide range of the role, which pretty much goes from high-dramatic soprano to dramatic alto. There are few singers in the world who can sing this exceptional role.”
“The Kaiser and Kaiserin are almost entirely diatonic characters, standing on tonal ground with their beautiful vocal lines. Barak is actually a kind of lied singer, almost always having a cantabile in his line purely because Strauss characterises him as a thoroughly positive, good-hearted person. In turn, his wife's music has very pointed, chromatic textures, very modern for the time. This stems from the struggle and tension she carries within her, her unfulfilled and unhappy feelings. Strauss uses a language of tonality contrasts as a guiding principle for the characters in this opera that works incredibly well.”
“For example, when we first end up in Barak's house in the first act, we almost immediately hear a kind of vocal duel between him and his wife: he with his long lines that are always grounded in tonal harmony, she with her extremely tense, volatile music that is not so clearly pinned down. They are opposites and do not fit together at all, not even musically. And the miracle, of course, is that at the beginning of the third act, after the cataclysmic event has taken place, these two completely separate lines suddenly find each other, come together. We then hear that musically the two do share something very deep.”
Transformation
Die Frau ohne Schatten is an opera about transformation. “That is true in particular for the two main female characters who as a result of their cathartic experience undergo major development and growth in the third act. As Hofmannsthal wrote to Strauss: even if the Kaiserin almost never speaks in the second act, she remains the main character, she is the ‘Frau ohne Schatten’. What matters is the incredible development she goes through. At the beginning of the opera, she sounds almost like a bird, a voice of nature; there is nothing human about it. Gradually she becomes a human being with a human voice.”
“In the middle of the second act, she experiences Barak's suffering, she understands the conflict and also understands what it means to feel compassion. And so she discovers a higher form of love. At that moment, something incredible happens musically: we briefly hear the Tristan chord and then enter a Bach-like world, the world of the St Matthew Passion. Strauss suddenly gives the Kaiserin a human tone and thus makes her growth through chastening and compassion symbolically perfectly clear. She turns from a somewhat superficial ‘happy housewife’ into someone with spiritual strength and an ethical compass. For me, that is the essence of the whole opera.”
A jubilant finale
Given the length of the opera and the highly demanding vocal parts, there have been quite a few cuts to the score in the past. “In this new production, I consulted a lot with the director Katie Mitchell to find ways to perform as much of the score as possible. This is a real gain, especially in the third act with its complex structure, in which everything seems to float around a bit and many layers alternate and intersect, in which nothing can be clearly separated. There is no weak music in this opera anyway. I completely fail to understand, for instance, why conductors as recently as thirty or forty years ago were making big leaps in the opera's finale. For me, there is not a single note in it that can be replaced or omitted. On the contrary, it is wonderful to notice the incredibly detailed way in which Strauss rounds the opera off musically.”
“You might say that the finale looks a bit naive at first glance, with its radiant C major and children's voices, but there are plenty of nuances in it, the jubilation we hear is very rich and multifaceted. There are also shadow moments, and the four characters rejoicing together each do so in their own way. Suddenly the two women sing in unison, word for word and note for note the same. They truly meet and that is incredibly beautifully and movingly composed.”
“And then in conclusion, Strauss doesn’t give a fortissimo C major chord, but a pianissimo ending, after letting all kinds of motifs sound once more. And at the very end, when no one is singing anymore, the low strings softly sound the motif with the Kaiser's death sentence — ‘Er wird zu Stein!’. The threat may have been sublimated, but it has not disappeared. We continue to hear the multiple layers of Die Frau ohne Schatten right through to the very last bars.”
A musical analysis of Strauss’s masterpiece
Die Frau ohne Schatten may well be Strauss’s most ambitious opera. Hofmannsthal’s enchanting yet complex libretto offered the composer an abundance of imagery and symbolism. Strauss transformed this into a large-scale musical work in which he combined technical virtuosity with profound earthly humanity.
A musical analysis of Strauss’s masterpiece
Humanizing a libretto
Die Frau ohne Schatten may well be Strauss’s most ambitious opera. Hofmannsthal’s enchanting yet complex libretto offered the composer an abundance of imagery and symbolism. Strauss transformed this into a large-scale musical work in which he combined technical virtuosity with profound earthly humanity.
Text: Bryan Gilliam
Die Frau ohne Schatten remains Hofmannsthal and Strauss’s most extravagant opera. Even now it is often performed without the full orchestral requirements, such as the glass harmonica in Act iii. The sonic variety is far more easily experienced than described as we move from the most diatonic music (the static D major pantomime between Barak and his wife in Act i) to the most dissonant (Keikobad’s banishment of the nurse), and from the loudest (at the end of Act ii) to pure silence (after the empress rejects the wife’s shadow). Vocal and instrumental groups are equally diverse throughout the three acts: symphonic interludes and chamber orchestra; extensive solos for cello, violin, and bassoon; and arias, duets, trios, and quartets, as well as on- and offstage choruses.
Complex yet personal
The opera, with its rich orchestration, dense polyphony, and intricate symbolism is Strauss’s most complex stage work, yet in many ways it is also his most personal. Though the subject concerns the shadowless Empress’s search for humanity, the subplot of the Dyer, his wife, and their troubled marriage touched Strauss more deeply than any other aspect of the plot. His own marriage was troubled during this time, and Hofmannsthal may well have sensed their domestic friction when he suggested that the Dyer’s Wife could be modeled “in all discretion” after Strauss’s.
Die Frau ohne Schatten stands out with its narrative structuring around two different marriages between three worlds: the invisible, spiritual realm of Keikobad; the glittering, semi-mortal kingdom of the Emperor; and the noisy, prosaic world of humanity (Barak and his loved ones). The Empress “stands between two worlds,” according to Hofmannsthal , “not released by one, not accepted by the other.” Daughter of the omniscient Keikobad, the Empress has been captured by the Emperor first while she was in the form of a gazelle, and then frozen in human form having lost her magic talisman. She has no human relationship with her husband, and is little more than a trophy (his “prey of all prey”), a sexual object as is made clear by the Nurse: “At first light he slips from her, when the stars appear he is there again. His nights are her day, his days are her night.”
The immortal world of the Empress is one of constant bliss, but one lacking human passion. In order to attain mortality (to give and receive human love) she must accept the totality of the human condition: pain, death, and sacrifice. In short, to feel the fire of human passion, she must accept life’s shadow, and ultimately life’s risks. The Empress, whose heart is as pure yet as transparent as crystal, ultimately refuses to take the shadow (the humanity) from the mortal Barak’s wife, putting the Emperor’s life at risk. Through a leap of faith – recalling Ariadne’s own risk-taking – she attains a shadow of her own.
Musical motifs
Not since Elektra had Strauss reached such an advanced stage of musical development in terms of technical craft, dramaturgical weight, and sustained seriousness of purpose. And not since Elektra had the composer created such a dense and substantial motivic network, now applied to a three-act opera.
These motives are characterized mostly by families (the spirit world, the emperor’s world, and the human world) of strong rhythmic articulations and triadic contours. Strauss began his Frau ohne Schatten as he had Elektra, with a motive based on the rhythm of a name, here Keikobad – a character who, like Agamemnon, never appears onstage but hovers above all the action in spirit form. The concise, pregnant three-note dotted rhythm (encompassing a major third and a fourth) generates a host of motives associated with both the good and the bad of his spirit realm. As with The Magic Flute, it is not clear at the beginning what those boundaries are.
Wartime worries
With all the imagery supplied to him by Hofmannsthal, the great challenge for Strauss lay in not giving in entirely to his technical brilliance, though, alas, there are many moments of sonic indulgence. As a listener or as an analyst, there are stretches of incredible music where there is enough motivic complexity to pull one into Strauss’s vortex of what he himself called “nervousness counterpoint” (Nervenkontrapunkt), and he even apologized for it. To take apart these intricate networks is not only beyond the scope of this chapter but risks falling into the trap of laborious motivic description. In a memoir, Strauss, for the first and only time, tried to ascribe the complexity of a musical score to “wartime worries,” which may have caused a certain “nervous irritation” in the score.
But surely another explanation was that Strauss was, at bottom, a pictorialist, and Hofmannsthal’s verbal pictures were simply too much to resist. The landscapes, riverscapes, and magic palaces interchange with cinematic quickness. The fountains, birds, invisible spirits, unborn children, apparitions, jewels, and talismans found their way into Strauss’s score with the same love of detail as in Salome. Yet, stripped of this surface exoticism, Strauss’s deeper music goals are clear, and indeed, they are what make this opera so moving.
Strauss’s primary concern with the nature of humanity versus inhumanity is directly reflected by his musical choices in the score. The inhuman – the seemingly cold world of the spirit – is musically restless, chromatic, dissonant, harmonically unstable, fragmentary, and the melodies (when there are any) appear remarkably disjunct, presenting great challenges to the singer. It follows quite naturally that the moments of humanity are stable, placid, at times even static as Strauss explores diatonic sonic realms and moments of moving lyricism.
From darkness to light
Die Frau ohne Schatten is Strauss’s most ambitious work, unparalleled in its varied harmonic plan, which is possibly the result of a tonal symbolism matching the literary symbolism of its poet. If we strip the score to its most basic level – from opening curtain to the final one – there is a general sense of steady progression from a bleak A♭ minor (the opening Keikobad motive) to the brilliant, breathtaking C major finale of Act III, where Strauss tries to combine central aspects of all the motivic families in a grand peroration.
That sense of light and its relationship to C major has a long history in Strauss’s music: the theme of the Ideal in Tod und Verklärung, Sun and World in Also sprach Zarathustra, and briljant catharsis at the end of Elektra. These roots go back as far as Haydn’s Die Schöpfung and are as recent as Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder. Strauss tried it again on this same vast level at the end of Friedenstag, with an extensive choral finale that on various levels mimics Beethoven’s Fidelio.
From a distance
There is no doubt that Hofmannsthal’s libretto can be exasperating at times, with its magical waters, enchanted fish, singing falcon, disembodied children’s voices, and the like. But the power of this richly textured work lies in the way in which Strauss so often composed against the grain of Hofmannsthal’s libretto. With self-confidence, even temerity, Strauss accepted the challenge of setting to music – and making stageworthy – Hofmannsthal’s most complicated text, a grand, complex fairy-tale. Indeed, in a moment of frustration, Strauss confided to Hofmannsthal that characters such as the emperor and the empress “can’t be filled with red corpuscles in the same way as a Marschallin, an Octavian, or an Ochs.”
But by looking into his own heart, he discovered the elusive flesh and blood he needed by taking Hofmannsthal’s metaphysics of love and translating it into a palpable human conflict. Strauss takes a high-minded libretto and tethers it compellingly to earth, to the opera stage and orchestra pit, exploiting a broad range of musical timbres, styles, and forms as he negotiates the spirit realm of Keikobad, the semimortal world of the emperor, and the humanity of Barak and his wife.
“Only from a distance was it confusing and disturbing,” the emperor (and presumably the composer) concludes in Act III; “if you listen quite closely, the sound is human!” What was confusing in the early years following Die Frau ohne Schatten’s premiere is now clear; the opera can be counted among Strauss’s most popular stage works.
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