Strauss Tunefulness

For 15 minutes last week a tall, hulking old man stood before the curtains at the Dresden Opera while a great German audience hocked him until it was hoarse. He was Composer Richard Strauss and Dresden, in accordance with its tradition, had put on the world premiere of another of his operas. This one was Arabella, the libretto for which had been written by Strauss's longtime collaborator, Poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, just before he died. It concerned the daughters of a bankrupt Viennese count, the youngest of whom paraded through three acts dressed as a boy and finally ended by marrying one of her sister's suitors.

Twenty-two years ago Composer Strauss wrote another opera whose plot depended upon disguise and mistaken identities. In Rosenkavalier, the most charming and successful of his works, a young Austrian nobleman dresses as a lady's maid, makes a monkey out of a lecherous old baron and after a series of richly comic episodes wins the girl whom the baron intended for himself. Arabella follows Der Rosenkavalier in many of its details. The impecunious old Count puts on a drinking act as blatant if not half so funny as old Baron Ochs's. A richly-scored waltz dominates the second act, laid at a coachmen's ball. Rosenkavalier airs sprinkle the Arabella score.

At Dresden critics were not vexed that Strauss had returned to tunefulness. They have long ceased expecting any more daring and original music from the composer of Elektra and the tone-poems. Conducting the premiere was an illegitimate Habsburg, Clemens Krauss, instead of Hitler-ousted Fritz Busch.

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