# A Great Opera With 'A Vulgar Ending'



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

This part of Cerendy's Strauss post caught my attention the other day:



> *I would rank "Frau" number one except for the music in the final section of the opera -- roughly from after "Wenn das Herz aus Kristal" through the end of the final quartet. I find much of this music trite, noisy and cheap-sounding.... I feel that Strauss is striving for some kind of cathartic happy ending but just can't pull it off. He goes into his "auto-pilot" mode and just recycles themes'*


It made me wonder how many other people had similar doubts about the final scenes. At the NY Times archives I found 4 separate reviews by their former critic Harold C. Schonberg.

A few excerpts:

*1.* Of all the Strauss operas Die Frau ohne Schatten seems to arouse the greatest reaction pro and con. There are those who flatly call it Strauss's greatest opera. There also are those who call it overwritten, pretentious and empty.

*2.* The first two acts see Strauss working at his highest inspiration, and there are those who place the music *above* Rosenkavalier, Salome and Elektra. Reacquaintance, however, still cannot convince this listener that the last (third) act is anything but a letdown. Strauss seemed to run out of ideas, and ended up manipulating leitmotifs in an automatic fashion and in one of the outstanding examples of fake nobility in all music.

*3.* The only really weak point in Die Frau occurs in the last two scenes, and especially the finale with its background chorus; this is hard to take; it is conventional, obvious and cheap, and one feels that the composer simply lost interest.

*4.* The last act with its backstage choral apotheosis is not only weak; it's actually vulgar, and no better than a great Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) finale of the 1930's. But even with this unfortunate last scene one is inclined to agree with those who through the years have been insisting that Die Frau has a breadth, intensity and lyricism unparalleled in the Strauss canon.

**********

_Fake nobility_? _Weak_? _Vulgar?_

Perhaps I've missed something along the way but I've always thought that the final quartet is one of Strauss' most glorious inspirations.

Have you ever met any Strauss buffs who share Harold Schonberg's (or Cerendy's) minority opinion here?


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I like MGM musicals! Film music from that era was better than a lot of the contemporary classical music.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

I have no problem with the ending. But I think Strauss does occasionally flirt with sentimentality.


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

Hmm ... I've listened to it a few times, and can't say I've ever noticed a final quartet. I'll listen for it next time, and see what I think.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Frosch has always been one of my fvorite operas and I've never felt the 3rd act to be in any way a letdown, nor is the conclusion vulgar or overblown .
The moment when the empress decides not to accept the soul of the dyer's wife is one of opera's heart-stopping moments . Parts of the 3rd act are often cut which actully aid the dramatic situation, which is unfortunate .


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## badRomance (Nov 22, 2011)

The work of the professional critic is ephemera. After a couple decades, as long as the original work still remain, nobody but historians give a damn what they thought.


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## Bardamu (Dec 12, 2011)

badRomance said:


> The work of the professional critic is ephemera. After a couple decades, as long as the original work still remain, nobody but historians give a damn what they thought.


"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves."

― Brendan Behan

What's interesting about studying critics opinion is that they often depict the spirit/cultural trend of the specific time.


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