Orpheus and Eurydice

Orpheus ; Eurydice for BBC, May 1972

It must have been early in 1923 that I was approached by Professor Leo Kestenberg who at that time was head of the music education system of the State of Prussia with the question whether I would be interested in using the drama Orpheus and Eurydice by Oskar Kokoschka as a libretto for an opera. Professor Kestenberg, himself an excellent musician and who had studied piano with Ferruccio Busoni had formerly been con- nected with the Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer and in that capacity concerned with the promotion of the paintings of Kokoschka who the in the last years before World War I had acquired some fame and perhaps even more notoriety as one of the first wild men of central European expressionism, and I was known to Kestenberg as one of the pupils of Franz Schreker whom I had followed from my native Vienna when he was called to Berlin by Kestenberg in 1919 to become director of the State Academy of Music.

Because Schreker did not much approve of the more progressive ways of composition upon which I had embarked in Berlin under the influence of such personalities as Busoni, Artur Schnabel, Eduard Erdmann

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und Hermann Scherchen, my studies at the Academy had come to a somewhat informal end, and at the time of Kestenbergs inquiry I was entirely on my own.

In spite of Working at a pace that today appears to me utterly miraculous, I had at that time already completed two stage works, a one-act play entitled Zwingburg (the Tyrant's Castle) and described as scenic cantata, and a full-length comic opera for which I had contrived my own libretto, called Der Sprung über den Schatten, (The leap over the shadow). Although I had not yet gathered any practical stage operatic experience through witnessing a performance of any either of these works, I was quite eager to continue in this direction. Thus I responded enthusiast- ically to Mr. Kestenbergs inquiry especially since I had heard that Paul Hindemith had composed another of Kokoschka's plays, and I found it very exciting to be associated with so famons an artist as this painter of of ultra-modern reputation.

The first reading of the drama was somewhat alarming. Not only was it much too long for an operatic libretto, which was normal after all, but also even more obsure and irrational than one might expect of liter- ature destined to be immersed in musical sound. Kokoschka had written this the Orpheus drama under severe shock trauma when he was recovering from a severe wound dangerous wound as a prisoner of war

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in Russia, and this difficult condition might may have left traces on the concept and the style of his work. Kokoschka's language is typical of the some mannerisms of early expressionism in its propensity for involuted or fragmentary syntax and neologistic additions to the trad- itional vocabulary; at the same time it is highly personal in its unmediated juxtaposition of almost colloquial conversation and very precious recherché turns passages some of which would elude most diligent and sympathetic analysis. The general impression was fascinating because of the aura of demonic emotional power of emtion and mystery. These elements made me overcome my initial hesitation, for this I hoped that preoccup- ation with this orphic poetry would propel my own musical imagination in a desirable direction that at that to me seemed to me highly

When I had completed a condensed the drama to manageable operatic size I felt I ought to visit the author, and ask for his approval and perhaps benefit from his ideas on the work and some suggestions he might offer. He was after all by fourteen years my senior older than I, which placed a fact me in a normally respectful attitude a condition which at that time still engendered a feeling of respect in the younger man junior. I traveled to Dresden, where Kokoschka was professor at the Acaddemy of Art, and he received me most cordially and with his irresistible somewhat roguish charm.

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While I glady succumbed to the latter, I was frustrated in the chief purpose of my errand. The great man did not even look at what I had done to his work, saying that he trusted that everything was just fine. At a second session we had he was so absorbed in putting together a Chinese puzzle that no real discussion de- veloped emerged. In spite of my frustr disappointment I developed unchanging feelings of warm sympathy for Kokoschka, but I have to my regret not succeeded in getting closer to him as a friend, probably because the component of vagrant roving irration- ality has in his mental make-up so much more weight than in my own.

Kokoschka's interpretation treatment of the ancient Greek legend reflects his famous and stormy love affair with Alma Mahler, the widow of Gustav Mahler, an experience that has also inspired several of his most significant paintings. The reference is made quite obvious. At the beg opening of the play Eurydice is con- sidering templating the inscription in her wedding ring of which she says in one of her first lines "As this ring is weldsng together Orpheus and Eurydice, thus forever one's happiness rests on the other". And But when at the climax of the tragedy after Eurydice's return release from Hades the ring turns up and Orpheus asks what is left of the inscription he reads the Greek words [Allos] [Makar], which with - allowing for some variants of spelling - may be interpreted trans to mean "Happiness is different", or "The other one happy". The Greek

and he certainly did not elucidate explain any of the more obscure spots of the play 5

words [Allos Makar] however, are meant to be recog- nized as a combination of the four syllables of the lovers' names: Alma and Oskar.

The relationship of Orpheus and Eurydice, as it unfolds in the play, is a very com- plicated one, mixed of love and hatred, passion, suspicion, devotion, melancholy resignation, fierce vindictiveness and destructive hatred. The ways in which some of the ancient symbols are here interpreted may perhaps be traced to the Freudian psychological concepts. While in the well known legend Orp Orpheus is forbidden to turn his head and to look at Eurydice when he leads her out of Hades, the injunction in Kokoschka's version reads that he must not ask her about what happened during those seven years in the netherworld. And while the ancient Orpheus can not restrain himself from looking back because of his overwhelming desire to see heragein, his modern counter- part breaks the command because of he cannot any longer suppress his growing suspicion after he has dis- covered the mutilated inscription on the ring.

To me it appears to be as a real stroke of genius how Kokoschka interwove the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice with the legend story of Amor and Psyche as a counterpoint. Psyche is here attached to Eurydice as a com- panion and guardian angel. Her own love affair with Amor is made difficult because she can receive him only in the dark of the night, but must never see him lest he will be blinded. and When the three furies, sinister emissaries of Hades appear to fetch Eurydice, Psyche blocks their en- trance stops them at the gate until the cleverest of the witches succeeds in making Psyche so

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suspicious of the true nature of her mysterious lover that she allows a torch to be lit when he arrives, and in the ensuing confusion the furies gain access to the house and take Eurydice away. In this such ways a great deal of dramatic contrast and profound symmetry of symbolism is achieved within a very small group of characters.

Strangely enough it so happened that when I courageously tackled even the more hermetic pas- sages of the text they seemed to become somehow translucent and to reveal some sort of secret meaning when invested with musical shape, although I would not be able to pin it down in so many words. The character of my music the musical idiom I utilized for in this opera may the time of be classified as, expanded tonality, or bordering on atonality, or some such thing. There are a few characteristic motivic configurations appearing from time to time. They have not so much the function of a psychological reference dictionary as like the Wagnerian leitmotiv, but their purpose is rather to create supply structural continuity and relate corresponding dramatic situations to one another.

The opera which at the time of its creation was considered excessively difficult was premièred in 1926 at the State Opera House in Kassel, Germany, where I functioned for two years as an assistant to the director, the former music critic Paul Bekker. It was Like most of my earlier works it was totally obliterated by the in the public eye through the public success of Jonny spielt auf, and and before the present revival rescucitated only once by Hermann Scherchen the at a Berlin broadcasting radio station, directed by around 1930.