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A Synagogue Is No Place To Perform Richard Strauss
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More in Forward ForumIn 1933, composer Richard Strauss was appointed by Joseph Göbbels as president of the Reichsmusikkammer, or German State Music Bureau. In 1945, Strauss declared that the Allied bombing of the Hoftheater, his favorite opera house in Munich, was “the greatest catastrophe that has ever disturbed my life.”
And now, six decades later, Strauss is being celebrated in a June 29 performance of his opera “Ariadne Auf Naxos” — at Congregation Ansche Chesed, of all places, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
To be fair, there’s another side to the story. Strauss did eventually resign his post at the Reichsmusikkammer, after refusing to take the name of Jewish librettist Stefan Zweig off the playbill for his opera “Die Schweigsame Frau.” Moreover, he may have saved several Jewish lives later in the war, specifically those of his daughter-in-law and her son, who were placed under house arrest in Vienna.
If the talmudic adage, “He who saves one life, it is as if he has saved the whole world,” is true without exceptions for self-interest, then right now Strauss is making music with King David. But if the Talmud has any sense of context, Strauss is burning in Hell while his music is played on Satan’s loudspeaker.
To the extent that any artist is capable of worldly effect, Strauss was an active participant in building Nazi culture by gladly performing tasks such as penning the musical theme for the 1936 Olympics. Even his quasi-pacifist opera “Friedenstag” is hardly anti-antisemitic. Strauss’s tepid musical “resistance” is but de minimus amelioration of the moral vacancy with which he lived in comfort through the 12-year reign of The Thousand Year Reich. He was not a banal naif; he was an accomplice and a collaborator.
This is not the first time, of course, that the rather widespread and long-standing antipathy toward German cultural produce has manifested itself. Indeed, it wasn’t until 2001 that the music of Richard Wagner, the undoubted genius and undoubted racist admired by Strauss, was performed in Israel. Appropriately, the musicians came from the Staatskapelle Berlin, the state orchestra, though Daniel Barenboim wielded the baton. And once the ban was abrogated, many Israeli orchestras followed suit.
However, Wagner in Israel is not a precedent to consideration of Strauss in shul. That’s because Israeli orchestras, though surely consisting primarily of Jews, do not present themselves as Jewish institutions guided by Jewish concerns. A shul, however, ought to have, as the old ad for Hebrew National hot dogs went, a higher standard.
A shul ought to be more like Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, who famously said, “To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again.” Instead, Ansche Chesed doffs its yarmulke.
Asking about this appalling juxtaposition of spectacle and venue, I was told that the shul had rented the premises to an organization called One World Symphony, thus implying lack of responsibility. Oh, but Strauss represents culture. When an avowedly egalitarian synagogue like Ansche Chesed feels obliged to honor Teutonic music, it’s a stunning admission that Jews have neither the will nor the inclination to respect their own tragedy while bowing to a repugnant universalism that denies all judgment.
Or maybe no judgment call was involved. I can only wonder whether it even crossed the mind of whoever in the synagogue authorized “Ariadne auf Naxos” that there was something a wee bit off about using its space in this way and putting up a nicely designed poster advertising the event in the lobby. Surely those who attend the performance will appreciate its many artistic virtues, but the very presence of Strauss in a Jewish sanctuary raises a very simple question to which there is one answer: Shame!
Melvin Jules Bukiet, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, is the editor of “Scribblers on the Roof: Contemporary American Jewish Fiction” (Persea, 2006).
Comments
Bukiet knows the whole story well enough, and is fair enough to it, to demonstrate what a weak case he's making.
This just in! Apparently, composer and alleged anti-Semite Richard Strauss remains dead, nearly 49 years after his death! As a result, he will be unable to collect any royalties that might otherwise be due as a result of the performance scheduled to take place at Ansche Chesed. Enjoy the concert, folks.
Bukiet is outrageously economical with the truth. Strauss may have lived in (relative) comfort during the Third Reich, but he did so in relative poverty as an exile in Switzerland, to which he went after saving the life of his Jewish daughter in law. After the war he returned to Germany to face an allied Denazification tribunal, and was cleared of any complicity with the Nazis. Enjoy the concert, Prof. Bugiet!
We know that Richard Strauss was not anti-semitic himself; we also know that he made efforts to protect several Jews. But that he may also have been a flawed human being in giving some support to the Nazi regime should not be the sole criterion for judging him -- as a person -- particularly when he, like many artists, had little interest in politics.
But whatever our judgements about Strauss as a person, he was, as we all know, a brilliant composer. The criterion for playing his music should be its quality -- not Strauss' personal life.
Determining the appropriateness of playing a composer's music by his personal life or views would be like choosing a surgeon by his personal life -- not his ability.
In addition to which: la guerre est finie. Let us not continue to fight a conflict which is now history.
Heroic ideation is a great inspiration for music. Whether we like it or not, the Germans have always been pre-eminent in music; their giants are deathless. This includes Wagner, who personally hated Jews and wrote insulting tracts denigrating Jewish composers. Nevertheless, had it not been for the nazis' atrocities a half-century after Wagner's death, we could now have been free to immerse in Wagner's music, so full of painful longing for herioc greatness, without our defenses mobilized. (But at least no one has ever dug up evidence that Bach or Mozart hated Jews. Then we couldn't listen to their music today either.)
Who are the people that object to Strauss being performed in a synagogue? If they are Holocaust survivors to whom anything German justifiably is an object of hatred, then I say let the opera be performed elsewhere. Our survivors deserve to be favored. But I am surprised that the writer would use the term "Teutonic music." It comes close to the canards about "Jewish science," and its narrow-minded spirit is certainly not what one expects from a professor. Shame on yourself.
Strauss's Four Last Songs will be exalted long after the whinings of retro-Philistines and political point-scorers are laughed into oblivion. Such complainants are no more than a Bowdler or Comstock of Jewish political correctness.
The German Zionists who collaborated so keenly with the Nazis in the 1930s-- any composers among them for Prof. Bukiet's Index of Forbidden Works?
Would Israel name a street after Wagner ? A ridiculous question ? But in Jerusalem there is a Chopin street. He composed beautiful music but should we forget that Chopin was an avowed anti-semite !
After 60 years it is time for the Jews to let the past go and start living in the 21st century. Richard Strauss never killed any Jews, he had Jewish friends and at that time you HAD to cooperate with the German authorities in your career or your life would be in danger. To say that his music shouldn't be performed in a synagogue is absolutely idiotic.
I can't agree with Professor Bukiet on this one. When a synagogue gives over its public space for a theatrical event such as an opera, it is playing a distinctly secular role rather than a religious one. For such a performance, its sanctuary is in effect de-sanctified. This doesn't mean any kind of entertainment should be allowed there - for example, I'd draw the line on "Oh, Calcutta!" - but a delightful musical romp like "Ariadne" would surely be a worthy undertaking for an enlightened congregation like Ansche Chesed. Let's not turn Strauss into Wagner.