ON MUSIC

...Zeus might just barely impregnate a girl as a bull or a swan, but a shower of gold...

...This is very well played, conducted and recorded, and is pristinely uncut and untransposed...

...Midas relates to Danae how Jupiter, disguised as an old wanderer, struck a bargain with him, and all he sacrificed for Danae's love...

...Additional difficulties include Jupiter's part being a lyric baritone with a tessitura so high that even the first singers who essayed it, the great Hans Hotter and Paul Schöffler, needed a downward transposition...

...Manuela Uhi, the Danae, starts out somewhat shakily, with occasional squeaks, but improves as she goes along, and does well by Act Three...

...I can feed this impertinence to the press...

...It has wonderfully lyrical duets, such as the feelingful colloquies between Danae and Xanthe, Danae and Midas, Danae and Jupiter...

...Paul Schöffler, as a fine but ponderously downward transposed Jupiter...

...Willi Schuh, the Swiss music critic and Strauss biographer, called it to the composer's attention...

...The art of tomorrow is different from the art of yesterday...

...According to David Murray in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, he had "no gift for lascivious farce...

...The Gregor libretto has been justly impugned...

...No matter...

...Thus the enchantingly sensual golden shower of Danae's dream contrasts with the somber golden shower Jupiter releases to disperse the greedy creditors...

...Yet in the postwar years he had left (he died in 1949), he steadily refused to grant performance rights, waiting for Salzburg and Krauss...

...But Danae, smitten with Chrysopher, feels unhappy in her wedding gown while the four queens, her cousins by marriage, recognize the pretend-Midas as Jupiter, their one-night-stand lover, and envy his greater love for Danae as they bedizen the bridal bed with flowers...

...I would bypass the Telare version, but can guardedly recommend either of the other two...

...Bryan Gilliam, in The Life of Richard Strauss, observes that "The fragile satire of Hofmannsthal's draft was well beyond Gregor's grasp...

...In the event, the premiere took place, as Krause notes, "32 years after Hofmannsthal's first synopsis, 23 years after his death, about 10 years [actually 12] after the completion of the score, and three after the death of the composer...

...Problematic, too, are the large cast, the aureate opulence, and the numerous necessary scene changes...

...What, in the early 1940s with Joseph Goebbels at full throttle, could one dare by way of social criticism...

...and the terrific Josef Gostic, the only holdover from 1944, as Midas...

...Nevertheless, the opera—belittled even in the conductor Norman Del Mar's groundbreaking three-volume Strauss study as "not rating a very high place" in the oeuvre—is steadily gaining recognition...

...You dare call Lehar a street musician...

...The first is a live recording of the 1952 Salzburg premiere (Orfeo 292923...

...How exactly could one bring the gold-obsessed Danae's choosing a poor muleteer over a mighty god to bear on the Nazi era...

...He then accepts Mercury's further suggestion that a renewed attempt at winning Danae, presumably soured by poverty, might be effective...

...Lehar has the masses and you don't...

...Again, the two scenes with the four queens, besides providing welcome light relief, emphasize and restate Jupiter's yearning for lasting human love as opposed to his promiscuous nonhuman dalliances...

...But this somewhat dated monophonie recording is further encumbered by awkward stage noises...

...The one who has now been found is King Midas of Lydia, he of the touch that turns all to gold...

...The most significant departure from the outline was making Jupiter into a major character...

...The rest of the cast is distinctly second-rate, and Botstein's conducting, plus the somewhat meager orchestral sound, do not convey fully the melodiousness of the music and lustiness of the orchestration...

...The opera itself I recommend wholeheartedly...

...As the composer Werner Egk reports in his memoir, TimeDoes Not Wait, "Goebbels slapped the letter and screamed: 'Herr Strauss, did you write that?'—'Yes.'—'Silence...

...In it he arrogated the right to distribute royalties according to his and his associates' lights, and concluded, "Goebbels has no right to interfere...

...in English, muleteer is more idiomatic...

...Not a few other specimens could be cited, among them Richard Strauss' penultimate opera and the subject of this column, Die Liebe der Danae (The Lave of Danae), completed in 1944 but not premiered till 1952...

...What makes Danae unique among Strauss operas is that, as Schuh pointed out, it combines his two strengths: for intimate opera, like Ariadne auf Naxos, Intermezzo, Daphne...

...To elaborate this new story element, the projected twoact opera added a long third act that turned out best...

...For a 75-yearold, something to be jolly proud of...

...The following year, Strauss was humiliated when Goebbels summoned a number of composers to his office and read a letter Strauss wrote while president of the Reich Music Chamber...

...Onajoint 1937trip to Italy, Strauss pointed out to Gregor at the Villa Borghese Corregio's painting of Danae as a young girl less interested in the god in the golden cloud than in the scattered gold coins she collected in her lap...

...It is regrettable that the only time Strauss saw the opera was at a semipublic dress rehearsal in Salzburg on August 16.1944...

...Once again disguised as an old burnoose-clad wanderer, Jupiter seeks out Danae in the humble but tidy hut she keeps for Midas, and woos her again...

...he, in turn, took up the project with his then librettist, Joseph Gregor, a much lesser talent than Hofmannsthal and his immediate successor, Stefan Zweig, who had to emigrate because he was Jewish...

...Strauss had admonished Gregor, "Writing in elevated language leads all too easily to hollow phrases, mere fillers that say nothing, and the empty jingle of rhymes...

...Although Lauren Flanigan's Danae is rather idiosyncratic and not exactly Straussian in style, she is a pleasure to hear...

...She chooses the impoverished Midas and revives...

...Gregor's libretto," he notes, "is often obscure in ideas, language and dramatic construction," and consequently "does not make this sufficiently clear...

...The usual example is Verdi's fi trovatore, with its endless exposition and fiercely melodramatic plot...

...Youhave no idea who you are and who I am...

...Gregor's libretto received assists from Clemens Krauss, Strauss' favorite conductor, the director Lothar Wallenstein, Zweig (by mail from London), and, of course, the composer himself, all superimposed on Hofmannsthal—a clear case of too many cooks spoiling the broth...

...He calls himself Midas' deputy, Chrysopher (Greek for gold bearer), but does what was forbidden him: He falls in love with Danae and elicits her reciprocation...

...And finally a simple, affectionate duet for the muleteer couple"—a reference to the winning suitor, Midas, the once and future muleteer...

...The three-disc set, with Krauss expertly conducting, features delightful singing by Annelies Kupper, as a splendidly highvoiced Danae who gets better as she goes along...

...You, Herr Strauss, are from yesterday!'" Strauss left the meeting shaken and on the verge of tears...

...that is the special gift of inferior musicians...

...In Act Three (approximately 74 minutes...

...Now, on a ship of gold and himself clad in it, Jupiter arrives, pretending to be Midas...

...Then he told the audience that Western culture had finally come to an end, "a public remark," Gilliam writes, "that would have led to the immediate arrest of most ordinary German citizens...

...the previous two together last about 90), we first see the lovers waking together on the road to Lydia...

...and Jupiter's golden shower bestowed erotically on Danae is complemented by her touching definitive farewell gift of her golden hair clasp...

...As early as 1920, Strauss told Hugo von Hofmannsthal, his brilliant librettist, that he wanted to compose—after a goodly period of serious opera—"a satirical operetta in late-antiquity costumes...

...As it turned out, he still had in store Capriccio, considered by some his supreme masterpiece...

...The god's first rejection of the still willing queens merely underlines his stronger passion for Danae...

...At Mercury's suggestion, he disperses them with another shower of gold...

...the second rejection, leading to a deeper longing for Danae, foreshadows the mood of farewell—Jupiter's from amorous escapades, Strauss' from life itself, for the composer thought this opera would be his swan song...

...Then she hurriesmerrily to welcome her husband returning from his daily labors...

...Hofmannsthal came up with the idea of combining the story of princess Danae (locked by her forewarned father into a brazen tower that Zeus penetrated as a shower of gold) with that of King Midas (who was granted the gift of turning anything or anyone he touched into gold—a gift so burdensome he had to ask for its rescindment...

...The comédie parts of the four queens similarly require major singers that, owing to their brevity, they are not likely to attract...

...and for grander, fresco-like opera, e.g., Salome, Der Rosenkavalier, Arabella...

...Strauss had expressly requested that the work not be performed until at least two years after the War's end and, as he presumed, his death...

...The others are all good, except for Hans-Jürgen Schöpflin's unpleasant-sounding Mercury...

...In addition, there are the comical scenes that fall between these two types, involving Jupiter with his four queenly ex-conquests...

...Next came the live recording of a 2000 New York City concert performance, with the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein (Telare 80570...

...I find it interesting that whatever value these two stories have as myths, they are especially unbelievable...

...The real Midas, after a tempestuous faceoff with Jupiter, and despite renewed warning, dons the god's attire and embraces the willing princess, who promptly turns into a golden statue...

...Hofmannsthal sent Strauss the outline of a libretto, the composer made some notes on it, then somehow forgot about it...

...He had been a poor muleteer, whom Jupiter transformed into King Midas, with the understanding that if he disobeys him, he will be back hitting the road with his donkey...

...He insisted: "No 'opera text!' I'll make it that when I compose it...

...Upon finishing it shortly after his 76th birthday, Strauss wrote Schuh: "In Act Three, I myself could find no fault, but would rather accord me the praise (seemingly conceded by all) that it ranks among the best I have ever written...

...Finally, there is the 2003/4 live recording of the Kiel Opera production under Ulrich Windfuhr (CPO 999967...

...The story is confusingly told...

...And if everything you touch turns to gold, how do you eat, drink or survive at all...

...As she reaffirms it, he lifts her onto his donkey, and in a lovely duet they acknowledge that in their toilsome but happy future the only gold will be the sunshine...

...It became The Love of Danae at the suggestion of Viorica Ursuleac, the intended Danae, wife of the original conductor, Clemens Krauss...

...Three recordings of Die Liebe der Danae exist...

...Not until 1936, well after the poet's death, was the outline published in the magazine Corona...

...So tortuous was the opera's genesis that even its working title was variously known as King Midas, The Deceived Jupiter, and Jupiter's Last Love...

...She recognizes him, but her renewed refusal culminates in the repeated, "Behold, I'm in love...

...since both stories dealt with gold's effect on a mortal, combining them seemed a viable notion...

...Still, he tried to deliver the demanded "pretty couplets, a gay feast, elegant dances for which I could write light stage music...

...Strauss asked Gregor to base his libretto on the outline of what Hofmannsthal had termed a satirical work "akin to operetta and close to the world of Lucian, Danae or the Marriage of Convenience" He had also advised Strauss, "The more Gallic your approach to it, the better—at heart it remains Germanic in its profundity...

...She claims a visitation by Jupiter as a shower of gold, but her maid, Xanthe, argues it was only a dream...

...Gregor's initial version was rejected by Strauss, who urged him to stick more closely to the outline and treat it "even parodistically, which would also improve the rather banal ending...

...The German text gives him a donkey and calls him a donkey-driver...

...He is even more on target maintaining that the question of whether "the human character is strong enough to banish the curse of gold" is not adequately developed...

...The story: Pollux, threatened by his creditors, has sent his four royal nephews, husbands of the world's most beautiful women and Jupiter's love objects—Semele, Europa, Alkmena, and Leda—to find a rich husband for Danae...

...A picture of Danae was shown to both Midas and Jupiter, who would assume the former's shape during womanizing, so that when the jealous Juno came vengefully after him, the adulterer would appear to be Midas...

...In his Richard Strauss, Michael Kennedy quotes Strauss' remark to Zweig: "I have never had the talent to write what can be performed easily...

...Franz Grundheber daringly and dazzlingly sings the difficult part of Jupiter in the high-baritone range in which it is written and most effective...

...Midas is therefore sent to Eos to claim Danae for Jupiter, bearing a golden wedding gown and other tribute...

...but also the choral, melodramatic scenes involving Pollux and the creditors, Jupiter disembarking among welcoming multitudes, and Jupiter, Mercury, Pollux, and the creditors...

...all of impoverished Eos receives him with cheers at the harbor...

...Strauss endorsed this, I assume, because he could identify with an aged god withdrawing to Olympus after realizing that, for all his love of humanity, he could not partake of human love...

...Deeply moved, the now 80-year-old composer thanked the Vienna Philharmonic under Krauss' baton, declaring "maybe we shall see each other again in a better world...

...Nonetheless, the intended "gay mythology" did not turn into an Offenbachian opera buffa, but into an opera semiseria, for which Strauss settled...

...On August 1, Goebbels had declared total war and the closing of all theaters and opera houses, but as a special concession to Strauss, that one dress rehearsal was permitted...

...Gregor was a rather ponderous Teutonic academician...

...Jupiter vainly tries to console himself in a banquet with the four eager queens, his former paramours, broken up by Pollux and the creditors demanding money...

...Danae is obsessed by gold and rejects suitors not loaded with it...

...The German Reciam Opera Guide felicitously summarizes the scene (I translate): "Moved by human love, which is both a gift of the gods and a threat to them, Jupiter leaves Danae, who gives him as a farewell present a golden clasp from her hair...

...The structuring, mostly by Strauss, is ingenious: Different types of scenes alternate contrastingly for savvy variety, but may also contain echoes that suggestively interrelate them...

...And there are passages that combine the intimate with the violent, such as the quarrel between Jupiter and Midas...

...But Krause is right when he claims that "the dance round the Golden Calf" that opens the opera, with King Pollux of Eos, Danae's father, broke and beleaguered by enraged creditors stripping the gold offhis throne, is "only remotely connected with the personal destiny of Danae...

...And Ernst Krause, in Richard Strauss: The Man and His Work, remarks, "In particular Gregor did not succeed in making the most of the socialcritical possibilities of the subject, or its bearing on the present day...

...as Gramophone's Classical Good CD Guide perhaps overseverely observes, "Despite a number of pages in Strauss' most appealing, late autumnal vein, this is a deeply flawed work, not least because of the wordy and rather empty libretto...

...Jupiter returns, and Midas proposes that they let the statue choose between the king of the gods and the once-again muleteer...

...This is going too far...