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Richard Strauss
DIE LIEBE DER DANAE
50 years after the world premiere in Salzburg

One of the central programming projects of the Salzburg Festival under its new artistic director Peter Ruzicka is the very topical “new analysis” of mythological subjects in the œuvre of Richard Strauss.

By staging one opera every year the status of Richard Strauss in music history is to be reconsidered and an assessment made of his influence on the 21st century. Strauss, allegedly conservative, was in reality a progressive composer, as revealed especially in his opera scores on mythological themes such as Die Liebe der Danae – to be presented in 2002 by Christoph von Dohnányi and Günter Krämer – Die Ägyptische Helena or Daphne. A new production of Der Rosenkavalier is planned for 2004.

1944 Dress rehearsal, 1952 world premiere

The trilogy begins in summer 2002, exactly 50 years after the definitive world premiere in Salzburg of Richard Strauss’s final opera Die Liebe der Danae. Christoph von Dohnányi agreed to conduct the new production following the tragic death of Giuseppe Sinopoli earlier this year. Stage director Günter Krämer will be making his debut in Salzburg, the sets and costumes are designed by Gisbert Jäkel. Deborah Voigt is singing the role of Danae, Franz Grundheber will sing Jupiter and Albert Bonnema will be heard as Midas.

Three dates are of decisive importance in connection with the final opera by Richard Strauss, one of the main premieres in the coming summer season, the first planned by Peter Ruzicka. In 1944, to celebrate the 80th birthday of festival co-founder Richard Strauss, a production of Die Liebe der Danae was planned but as a result of the “total war” it only reached the stage of a public dress rehearsal.
The official premiere took place in 1952 conducted by Clemens Krauss. Fifty years later, in 2002, the performance of the “cheerful mythology” is to initiate a new analysis of the “unknown” Strauss in Salzburg. These three dates also play a decisive role in the stage concept of director Günter Krämer and his stage designer Gisbert Jäkel. Krämer confesses that he is not particularly fond of works in the mainstream repertoire but prefers unknown territory and considers Die Liebe der Danae to be a comparatively “simple story”.

The gift of being able to turn everything to gold

The combination of the love story of Danae and Jupiter, who steals into the dreams of the daughter of King Pollux as “golden rain”, and the saga of the donkey-driver Midas on whom the god bestows the deceptive gift of being able to turn everything he touches to gold, is for Günter Krämer a strong parable about the “compulsion to economise beauty”.

The dream of wealth, the economic miracle, the freeze

Krämer refers back to the “cyclical homogeneity” of the basic story written by Hofmannsthal and intends to present the events act for act on three time levels. The first act takes place amidst the destruction of war in 1944 in an abandoned, devastated salon on fragmented marble paving stones. The “dream of wealth”, perhaps only a memory, rains down and is felt to be like a chimera, as beautiful “golden rain”. The second, “golden act” so to speak, is to be linked to 1952, the time of the economic miracle and reconstruction. And the final act, dealing with true love and divine renunciation is set in what is possibly a utopian present: against the background of the Salzburg landscape as the epitome of natural beauty yet where there is a danger of “being iced over”. Jäkel’s stage is, for director Günter Krämer, a “magic box” in which desires, illusions, realities are to be reflected.

Karl Harb

Richard Strauss
Die Liebe der Danae
Sung in German with
English supertitles

Kleines Festspielhaus

New production: 19 August 2002, 6.30 p.m.
22, 25 (7 p.m.), 28, 31 August 2002 (4 p.m.)

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