The Last Opera

Chandler Carter

Description

From the fall of 1947 through the summer of 1951 composer Igor Stravinsky and poet W. H. Auden collaborated on the opera The Rake's Progress. At the time, their self-consciously conventional work seemed to appeal only to conservative audiences. Few perceived that Stravinsky and Auden were confronting the central crisis of the Modern age, for their story of a hapless eighteenth-century Everyman dramatizes the very limits of human will, a theme Auden insists underlies all opera. In The Last Opera, Chandler Carter weaves together three interlocking stories. The central and most detailed story explores the libretto and music of The Rake's Progress. The second positions the opera as a focal point in Stravinsky's artistic journey and those who helped him realize it—his librettists, Auden and Chester Kallman; his protégé Robert Craft; and his compatriot, fellow composer, and close friend Nicolas Nabokov. By exploring the ominous cultural landscape in which these fascinating individuals lived and worked, the book captures a pivotal twenty-five-year span (from approximately 1945 to 1970) during which modernists like Stravinsky and Auden confronted a tectonic disruption to their artistic worldview. Ultimately, Carter reveals how these stories fit into a larger third narrative, the 400-year history of opera. This richly and lovingly contextualized study of The Rake's Progress sheds new light on why, despite the hundreds of musical dramas and theater pieces that have been written since its premier in 1951, this work is still considered the "the last opera."

Acknowledgments

Part I: The Cultural Moment

Prelude

Part II: The Drama

1. A Convergence of Minds

2. A Happy Collaboration

3. Deeper Meanings

Part III: The Music

4. Stravinsky's "Special Sense"

5. Displacement, Text Setting and Stravinsky's Evolving Aesthetic

6. Stravinsky's Truths and Mozart's Lies—Music, Emotion and Theatrical Distance

7. The Structure of Scenes

8. Ruin, Disaster, ... Saving Grace

Part IV: Performance

9. Venice

10. How The Rake became a Masterpiece

Epilogue: "Good people, just a moment"

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Russie
• Anglais
• Opera
• Music
• Nicolas Nabokov
• Doctor Faustus
• English
• Russia
• Multiple signal classification
• Doktor Faustus
• Idioma inglés
• Genres
• Styles

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253041616
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

THE LAST OPERA
RUSSIAN MUSIC STUDIES
Simon A. Morrison and Peter Schmelz, editors
THE LAST OPERA
The Rake s Progress in the Life of Stravinsky and Sung Drama
Chandler Carter
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2019 by Lee Chandler Carter, II
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Carter, Chandler, author.
Title: The last opera : the Rake s progress in the life of Stravinsky and sung drama / Chandler Carter.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2019] | Series: Russian music studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018031197 (print) | LCCN 2018032316 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253041593 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253041579 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253041586 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Stravinsky, Igor, 1882-1971. Rake s progress. | Opera.
Classification: LCC ML410.S932 (ebook) | LCC ML410.S932 C53 2019 (print) | DDC 782.1-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018031197
1 2 3 4 5 24 23 22 21 20 19
For Jane and Owen
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Part 1 The Cultural Moment

Prelude

1 A Convergence of Minds

Part 2 The Drama

2 A Happy Collaboration

3 Deeper Meanings

Part 3 The Music

Introduction to Part 3

4 Stravinsky s Special Sense

5 Displacement, Text Setting, and Stravinsky s Evolving Aesthetic

6 Stravinsky s Truths and Mozart s Lies-Music, Emotion, and Theatrical Distance

7 The Structure of Scenes

8 Ruin, Disaster, Saving Grace

Part 4 Performance

9 Venice

10 How The Rake Became a Masterpiece

Part 5 After The Rake

11 Good People, Just a Moment

Bibliography

Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
M Y RESEARCH HAS BEEN SUPPORTED BY NUMEROUS FACULTY research grants, a sabbatical leave from Hofstra University, and a generous fellowship from the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. I thank Dr. Heidy Zimmerman, Dr. Ulrich Mosch, and the staff of the Sacher Foundation for facilitating my study of Stravinsky s sketches and letters and especially Robert Piencikowski for his generous advice and encouragement over my many summer visits. I also thank the archivists and staffs of the Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library; the Harry Ransom Center in Austin; the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm; the Glyndebourne Festival in Sussex, England; the Santa Fe Opera; and the Art Institute of Chicago, who allowed me access to important primary material.
For his countless insights, advice, and suggestions, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Joseph N. Straus, a model theorist and scholar who shares my love for this opera, who guided my research during my days as a doctoral student and aspiring Stravinskian, and who more recently read through the complete manuscript. I also greatly appreciate the valuable guidance from journal editors Joel Lester and Kate van Orden for earlier articles that formed important parts of the book. I thank my Basel colleague Natalia Braginskaya for pointing out Stravinsky s references to Russian music, and Polina Belimova and Rebecca Mitchell for their help in translating the Russian letters. And special thanks to my friends and colleagues Philip Stoecker, Mark Anson-Cartwright, and Brenda Elsey for helpful feedback and suggestions.
I am especially grateful for the constructive comments and criticism from the anonymous reviewers of this volume and indebted to my editors at Indiana University Press, Janice Frisch and Professors Peter Schmelz and Simon Morrison, for their careful reading and help in strengthening my work. Lastly, I thank my wife Jane Huber and son Owen for their forbearance and understanding. Both are passionate artists and thinkers in their own right who have inspired me in this and all my work. I dedicate this book to them.
Excerpts and images from Stravinsky s compositional sketches and personal correspondence are reprinted by permission of the Paul Sacher Foundation, Stravinsky Collection.
Excerpts from Auden s and Kallman s correspondence are reprinted by permission of the W. H. Auden Estate, the Chester Kallman Estate, and The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
Excerpts from Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverk hn as told by a Friend by Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods, translation copyright 1997 by Penguin Random House LLC. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons by Igor Stravinsky, translated by Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Copyright 1942, 1947, 1970, 1975 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Excerpts from the writings of J rg Immendorff are used by permission, copyright The Estate of J rg Immendorff, Courtesy Galerie Michael Werner M rkisch Wilmersdorf, K ln New York.
Excerpts from Stravinsky: The Chronicle of a Friendship: 1948/1971 by Robert Craft, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994, used by permission.
Excerpt from Opera News used by permission.
PART 1
THE CULTURAL MOMENT
PRELUDE
C OMPOSER I GOR S TRAVINSKY AND POET W. H. A UDEN - TWO of the finest artists and most compelling minds of the twentieth century-collaborated from the fall of 1947 through the summer of 1951 on an opera, The Rake s Progress . At the time, their self-consciously conventional work seemed to appeal only to conservative audiences. Few perceived the creators were also confronting the central crisis of the modern age, for their story of a hapless eighteenth-century Everyman dramatizes the very limits of human will, a theme Auden insists underlies all Opera.
The story of their collaboration, the opera itself, and its subsequent reception also reveal each man s struggle to assert himself. Inner vision and outer forces especially drove the life and work of Stravinsky. He possessed perhaps the most distinctly individual voice in twentieth-century music, yet openly sought to be influenced and not just musically. Friends and colleagues he drew in close positively shaped his personal and professional choices, especially in his early and later years; those he kept at a distance did so negatively. The larger world of ideas and events, both great and terrible, likewise molded him. Revolution and world wars twice dislocated him from his home and loved ones, severing old ties and creating new ones; politics, in government and in the arts, stifled as well as kindled opportunities; competing ideologies established the terms we use to discuss his music and with which even the composer defined himself.
Probably more than any musician of his time, Stravinsky sought to control his circumstances, in part by shaping how the world perceived him and his work. Of the impact of Diaghilev and eighteenth-century classicism on his Pulcinella , he contended: I created the possibility of the commission as much as it created me. 1 The Great Artist fascinates not just because he (the type is gendered) embodies the Zeitgeist , which is to say the cultural moment expresses itself through him. He also-and by contrast-exemplifies the very possibility of autonomy against the raging tempest of ideas, people, and events. In other words, Great Artists, we imagine, create the cultural moment. We exalt them as unique creators irreducible to any condition or conditioning. 2 Indeed, their collective stories have defined the modern age. Postmodern scholars try to crack their seemingly freestanding facades, but the allure of the artist remains. Through him we project an ideal version of our collective self-at least, I confess, I so imagine Igor Stravinsky. If this brilliant, diminutive Russian migr could somehow navigate the storms and stresses of his time and still assert artistic control, defy commercial pressures and still thrive, determine the nature and scope of his most ambitious work despite countless obstacles and entrenched resistance, then perhaps a vestige of autonomy remains.
To balance these competing perspectives The Last Opera will tell three stories, each framing but also interwoven with the next. The central, most detailed story explores Stravinsky s longest work and possibly richest collaboration. These chapters present a case study in the extent to which individuals and their work can encapsulate their time. 3 The second story fills out that time by positioning the opera as a focal point in the journeys of Stravinsky and those who helped him realize it-librettists Wystan H. Auden and Chester Kallman; his prot g Robert Craft; and his compatriot, fellow composer, and close friend, Nicolas Nabokov. By exploring the ominous cultural landscape in which these fascinating individuals lived and worked, the book extends well beyond a single opera and its nominal creators. It captures a pivotal twenty-five-year span (roughly 1945-70) during which modernists like Stravinsky and Auden confronted a tectonic shift in their world. This story in turn becomes swept up in the 400-year history of opera that both coincides with and marks the larger modern era. Observations about this seemingly waning