Braunfels The Birds (After Aristophanes)

Textkit Community Civilization and Culture of the Greeks and Romans
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The live broadcast of Brauenfels’ The Birds is being streamed free at 6 pm CET (Munich time) today. Brauenfels was one of those composers who fell foul of the nazi regime as he was half jewish and after 1933 his music was banned. After the war he fell out of fashion as not being avant garde enough. Before he was banned he was as famous as Richard Strauss.

The link is here. The broadcast has been brought forward because all theatres in Germany have to close after Monday and all remaining performances have been cancelled. If you can’t watch the live stream you can buy a ticket to watch it for 30 days for 9.90 Euros.

The link is here:

https://www.staatsoper.de/en/tv.html?no_cache=1#c18431

This is the description from the web site:

“It has literally come to be – the “cloud-cuckoo-land” of Aristophanes’s ancient comedy, The Birds. With unprecedented hubris the birds believe they are the Gods’ equal and can build their own powerful state, which will practically starve the Gods. How mistaken they are – at once foolhardy and ridiculously risible, with a tragic end for the rebels. The world premiere of his adaptation of the ancient material in Munich in 1920 was a huge breakthrough for composer Walter Braunfels. An enormous success, followed in Munich alone by fifty performances! His version is idiosyncratic and stand-alone – Braunfels adds a deeply romantic aspect to the piece, while remaining true to the comedy. He not only understands the new polity of the birds in political terms; he also does so artistically and lyrically. The new state’s failure is attributed to both a lust for power and a misplaced idealisation. The ancient myth is reflected in the sorrowful experiences of a world of yesterday. For Braunfels the ruins of the First World War are visible signs all around of the both political and spiritual decay – his opera is a final emphatic uprising against the fragmentation of the present. One hundred years later the work’s first new production now follows at the point of its world premiere.”

The director of the opera Frank Castorf is a famous theatre director. I saw his ring in Bayreuth which was of course hugely controversial but subsequently much admired.

I first heard this music when Decca records started a series called “Entartete Musik” “degenerate music” featuring music banned by the nazis either because the composers were Jewish or because they deemed them too modern. The music is very romantic and beautiful and has much in common with Strauss although there is an individual voice here.

I have never seen the opera and so I am keen to see what it looks like on stage.

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First impressions-Busy, busy, busy! That notwithstanding, very enjoyable! I loved the visual allusion to Hitchcock’s “The Birds” as a sort of modern day revolt, even the poster of “The Byrds”, which of course reminded me of the song “Eight Miles High” (in a titanium bird). I was somewhat taken aback to see Hoffegut and Ratefreund in SS uniforms replete with swastikas, not that it was inappropriate to the theme; I just didn’t expect to see it in a post war German opera house.

As Seneca noted, the music is beautiful and I was enchanted by Caroline Wettergreen’s Nachtigall. She even managed to make the abrupt bird-like head movements seem natural.

I haven’t read Aristophanes’ original play, but I notice that Prometheus mentions the scars on his wrists from chafing at his bonds. Catullus also mentions Prometheus’ scars in his “Marriage of Pelias and Thetis” Carmen 64.295. It also turns out that Nachtigall is Procne who slew Ithys (Ithys, mein Sohn, mein Sohn!)in an act of revenge against Tereus, who is later transformed into a Hoopoe (Wiedhopf).

All in all, a very enjoyable afternoon!

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Aetos I am glad you enjoyed it. I may post some more on this especially in relationship to Aristophanes but I just wanted to pick up on the point you made about the Nazi uniforms.

Being taken aback is perhaps entirely the result which Castorf desired. He often invites audiences to think about their shared past. Given the associations of Munich to the rise of the Nazi party I guess it was inevitable that somehow it would be introduced. Indeed many regular opera goers would have groaned that this trope is so well worn as to be meaningless. Your reaction gives the lie to this. (A similar reaction by conservative audiences is evoked by the use of machine guns in apparently “ahistorical” settings). Its rationale was of course that any attempts to base a society on an ideology comes with attendant dangers. But further when Braunfels first wrote the opera audiences had a shared experience of defeat and destruction in the First World War. Castorf invites us to view that through a different lens. Its only a small part of the production but quite telling. Just as important was the depiction of looted art which also raises the issue of what is art and how it is valued - something implicit in the Nazi’s exhibition of “Entartete Kunst” which self defeatingly boosted the fame and fortunes of those artists selected for derision.