Letter from C. Kallman/W. H. Auden to H. W. Henze, July 15, 1960

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nach dem Glyndebourne Brief ‡
Kirchstetten
July 15th [1960] *
Absurd comentaries[sic] ‡ by Dr. Ludwig
Strecker (in pencil) publishing director of
Schott’s ‡ *

No, we won’t reproach you for your shower of correspondence* because we were trying
t ‡o get in the proper mood to do "Mahagonny" * at the time, but, my dear, I must adxx ‡
admit to shrieking with aesthetic horror when I ran across a reference to "La
Boheme[sic] ‡ " in your last letter.* No no no no. Stay away! Here we are trying to d ‡o
a full-length portrait of a really great artist and you face us with the
"economies" of Puccini.* First of all, leave them to Puccini who had over a
century of Italian Opera to work from and, so far as I’m concerned, exhausted the
economies based on those conventionsxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ‡ its conventions much as Mahler exhausted the
expansive luxuries based on "german[sic] ‡" symphonic conventions: opera must learn to
think emotionally again. And that means cruelty and clarity. And that means
a concept of economy that has nothing to do with the limited gamut of effects
Puccini was after. Just look at Boheme[sic] ‡ . One result of its disgre t ‡ion[sic] ‡ is that
it is impossible to believe that one of those artists ever did a bit of work
that was worth anybod y ‡[sic] ‡ time or attention. But I’m rambling. Back to Elegy.

Herein are some of the First Act cuts indicated and tallied. The Money Ceremoney[sic] ‡
cannot be cut.* If you soften ‡ *

[Addition of Ludwig Strecker cannot be published for legal reasons]

Hinty, you destroy him. Please remember he is a
monst er ‡ ‡. As Wagner was, as Yeats was. And also pleas e ‡ remember that he has not
had a quarrel with Karoline[sic] ‡ , he is merely a lion who doesn’t at times realise
the strength of his own brand of Humour. And he didn’t know she was ill. Also—
his boisterous dismissals of his "rivals" not only establishes his rank as a
poet in the audience’s minds, it is also, we feel, how he would express himself
about them. Second-rate critics in literary magazines, and even in private,
take a "serious professional" attitude towards contempories, never ‡
serious first-rate writers;*


and certainly not in private. If you make Hinty serious
in that scene, you will make him a bore ‡; and though Elizabeth may be bored with him
for her own reasons, the public certainly must never be. If you find the scene
difficult, so much the better. That means you will have to uncover musically
that vein of sly mischief in yourself that you have thus far been too German to
allow its full freedom. Out with it, girl! ‡ We know it’s there. Be as funny
musically as you were verbally when you talked about Stockhausen to us.
Scratch. Be a cat; not a cuddly St. Bernard.‡

The scene cannot be changed to Hinty’s House. * If that is done, all of H i ‡lda’s
raison d’etre as a character is d e ‡stroyed. One can hardly assume that she spent
her honeymoon in his house; and if she can move about from one place to another,
what becomes of her waiting for her bridegroom? Where is the dramatic effect
of her liberation then. Of course the inn parlors of Alpine Inns are middle-class
stuffy; but that’s just what we need--that hideous respectable heaviness--
to contrast with the drama of people who have rebelled against it but are never-
the less[sic] ‡ rooted in it. Let the vista of Hammerhorn "lighten" the decor; and also
provide the necessary contrast: Death via too much air versus Death via too
little air. Elegy cannot have the same operatic trappings as Homburg or Hirsch.

Splitting the Second Act in the middle is just about possible. But it must only be for
Glyndebourne. The Interlude idea, however, is simply an impossible
bit of fidgety kitsch, unworthy of consideration.* For one thing, it will
kill the effect of Hulda’s later entex ‡r e ‡nce and it will also kill the whole
interwoven plan of the dramatic action. The second Act must concentrate on the
interactions of character. There’s enough scenic hullabaloo in the th ir ‡ d ‡
* ‡


Please remember, darling, ‡ stage directors should begin their business when a work
is finished, xxx‡ not before. If he finds the setting and some of the action "diffi-
cult" ,[sic] ‡ it’s his job as a director to solve those problems, because we’re not
making those problems just to be difficult, but because some things must be so. Well, that’s enough for now. We’ll discuss the other points* when we see you.*

Love Chester

Forti‡ abbracci. Wystan . ‡

P.S. It is of course,
possible to substitute a
rare plant no one has heard of
for Edelweiss, but why? ‡.*

Letter from C. Kallman/W. H. Auden to H. W. Henze, July 15, 1960

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