Music: Strauss v. Munich

Richard Strauss was born in Munich and lived there, or not far away, much of his life, but he feuded with the staid Münchners for rejecting his first (1893) opera, Guntram. The Munich Opera dropped it after only one disconsolate performance. Strauss’s revenge: his very next opera, Feuersnot (1901), a go-minute twitting of Munich’s conservative burghers. At the current Munich Festival, opera fans flocked to see their first Feuersnot in more than 20 years, heartily applauded the lampooning administered to them from across the footlights.

The stage set got in the first dig: the houses of old Munich were actually stylized caricatures of the city’s sobersided medieval citizenry. Against this background unfolded the ribald tale of Kunrad, a young sorcerer, whose ardor for the virgin Diemut scandalizes the whole town. Derided and humiliated by them. Kunrad takes his revenge by magically extinguishing every fire in Munich, leaving the helpless bluenoses in chilly darkness. Kunrad delivers a 20-minute homily to the chastened Münchners (dramatically cumbersome, but Strauss insisted he had written the opera only for the sake of that speech. Soon all Munich is busily engineering Kunrad’s conquest and Diemut’s capitulation—which occurs offstage but to almost pornophonically explicit music from the orchestra.

Critics chided the Metropolitan Opera’s Herbert Graf for unimaginative staging but cheered the singers and especially the rediscovered score. Almost as successful was the evening’s other revival: Strauss’s seldom-done ballet. Josepkslegende, which he wrote in 1914 on commission from Diaghilev. In the last six summers, by emphasizing the works of Home Town Boy Strauss. Munich’s opera festival has risen to rank with many of Europe’s best, attracts opera fans en route from Salzburg to Bayreuth. And in the bout between Munich’s conservatives and their nose-thumbing native son. there is no longer any doubt as to who has won the decision.