Every
one knows what the score of "Rosenkavalier" should have been, a gay,
florid, licentious thing, the very image of the gallant century with its
mundane amours and ribbons and cupids, its _petit-maitres_ and furbelows
and _billets-doux_, its light emotions and equally light surrenders. But
Strauss's music is singularly flat and hollow and dun, joyless and
soggy, even though it is dotted with waltzes and contains the delightful
introduction to the third act, and the brilliant trio. It has all the
worst faults of the libretto. Hofmannsthal's "comedy for music," though
gross and vulgar in spirit, and unoriginal in design, is full of a sort
of clever preciosity, full of piquant details culled from
eighteenth-century prints and memoirs. The scene of the coiffing is a
print of Hogarth's translated to the stage; Rofrano's name "Octavian
Maria Ehrenreich Bonaventura Fernand Hyazinth" is like an essay on the
culture of the Vienna of Canaletto; the polite jargon of
eighteenth-century aristocratic Austria spoken by the characters, with
its stiff, courteous forms and intermingled French, must have been
studied from old journals and gazettes. And Strauss's score is equally
precious, equally a thing of erudition and cleverness. Mozart turned the
imbecilities of Schickaneder to his uses; Weber triumphed over the
ridiculous romancings of Helmine von Chezy.
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