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Updated: May 8, 2025
Von Hofmannsthal's figure of the deserted lady is not a particularly moving one. Naturally, much must be allowed for the obviously artificial character of the piece. Max Reinhardt, maker of stagecraft and contriver of "atmosphere," has caught the exact shades. In the dinner scene of the play his stage was chastely beautiful.
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.
Just as Hofmannsthal imitates Hogarth, so Strauss imitates Mozart, affects his style, his turns, his spirit; inserts a syrupy air in the style of Haendel or Méhul in the first act; and jumbles Mozart with modern comic-opera waltzes, Haendel with post-Wagnerian incantations. And like Hofmannsthal's libretto, the score remains a superficial and formless thing.
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