* Hugo von
Hofmannsthal, "Ein Brief" (A Letter), in Gedichte und Prosa.
But riding out one day, after he has ordered rat poison to be scattered in the milk cellar of his farm which is riddled with rats, just as he regains his spiritual calm in the middle of beautiful nature, he is suddenly filled with a vision of what must be happening in that cellar at that very moment: it must be filled by the 'pungent reek of poison, and the yelling of the death-cries' of the rats and 'the vain convulsions of those convoluted bodies as they tear about in confusion and despair.'
Hofmannsthal presents a harrowing picture of the rats' suffering, concluding with an unbearable image of a mother rat surrounded by 'her young in their agony of death': in her helpless terror, she is staring 'into the void, or through the void into Infinity.'
Earlier scholarship on Der Rosenkavalier identifies literary sources, such as Pierre Beaumarchais' Figaro trilogy, as influential, and traces connections between Der Rosenkavalier and the operatic models that Strauss and
Hofmannsthal discussed in their letters.
The Rialto Theatre will offer those of us who are not familiar with the myth a chance to get to know it and, for those of us who do, a new way of getting to know it through Richard Strauss's opera, with libretto by Hugo von
Hofmannsthal.
Let me proceed to Chereau himself, who clearly considered himself a better arbiter than its creators of just what Elektra needs, repeatedly running contrary to what's readable in the text and audible in the musicWhere, for instance, is the sleep-deprived Klytamnestra
Hofmannsthal describes, "behangt mit Steinen," or the vivid action to match Strauss's frenzied, pulsating music for her entrance, or her wild joy on hearing of Orest's demise?
Yet in the cultural milieu of fin-de-siecle Vienna, the same environment that produced Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von
Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil and Joseph Roth, Zweig was neither genius nor alchemist.
Rodolphe von
Hofmannsthal is associate director of David Zwirner in London.