Henze | Auden | Kallman

Elegy for Young Lovers

The place of the first encounter between Henze, Auden and Kallman, the town of Forio on Ischia, was mentioned in the first letter from the librettists to the composer. Forio then became the imaginary town in the early 20th century in which the plot of an opera to be developed together would be set. Although the letter is not preserved, Henze recounts in his autobiography that in December 1958 he wrote to Auden in New York “asking him in all humility” whether he would like to work with him on an opera, with or without Kallman (Henze, Bohemian fifths: An Autobiography, p. 162). Henze also informed his friend Ingeborg Bachmann about the positive response from the librettists, to whom he wrote: “Auden has also offered me his librettist skills” Bachmann and Henze, Briefe einer Freundschaft, p. 215, translation by the author.

After these first letters, intensive work began that led to their first joint opera: Elegy for Young Lovers, the subject of which, however, was not that Auden and Kallman had proposed in their first letter to Henze. In the Summer of 1959 Auden, Kallman and Henze met at Auden and Kallman’s house in Kirchstetten, Austria, which they had both visited every year since 1959. There, Henze told them both about his musical idea for Elegy for Young Lovers: as Auden and Kallman report, Henze wanted to write a chamber opera for a small cast and ensemble and without chorus (see Auden and Kallman, “Genesis of a Libretto”, in: Elegy for Young Lovers, pp. 61-64). Instruments were to accompany the characters of the opera and characterize them with their timbres, while some realistic sound elements - such as the chimes of a large grandfather clock or train whistle - were to mark the significant moments in the dramaturgy. In Kirchstetten, there was a continuous exchange of musical suggestions, literary additions, and cuts to the libretto, which functioned in an equal and open manner. In retrospect, Henze perceived this as “an extended game of ping-pong for three” (Henze, Bohemian fifths: An Autobiography, p. 164), with discussions ranging from the choice of names of characters and places of action to musical tempo and the mood of scenes. The development of the libretto for Elegy for Young Lovers was accompanied by Henze’s suggestions, documented in letters (see, for example, this letter) and by Henze’s memories of personal meetings in his autobiography. There, he reports, for example: “I was pleased to see how seriously they took my requirements and the description of the music that I could hear in my own mind’s ear…” (Henze, Bohemian fifths: An Autobiography, p. 164).

A draft of the libretto must have reached Henze by August 1959, because in a letter to Bachmann dated 27 August 1959, after their meeting in Ascona, Henze writes that she should send him the “Auden poem” as soon as possible. Henze later recalled this “Auden poem” to be a first, lost version of the libretto. This “Auden poem” was then identified, according to Henze’s recollection, as a first, lost version of the libretto (Bachmann and Henze, Briefe einer Freundschaft, p. 226 and p. 502). In his autobiography, Henze also mentions that he received a synopsis very soon after his first meeting with Auden and Kallman, but that it was lost (Henze, Bohemian fifths: An Autobiography, p. 164-165). As for the promptness of Auden’s and Kallman’s responses and willingness to listen, Henze writes again to the friend Bachmann on 20 December 1959:

Bachmann und Henze, Briefe einer Freundschaft, p. 231, translation by the author.

The correspondence shows that the librettists also had an influence on the musical character of certain passages, as in the case of the duet between the secretary, Countess Carolina von Kirchstetten, and Dr. Reischmann, for which the two librettists suggest a duet in the style of Rossini (see this letter). Henze indeed transforms the text into a duet explicitly inspired by the formal conventions of early 19th-century Italian melodrama through the triple repetition of Reischmann’s verse, followed by Carolina’s verse, and the clustering of the two at the end; it culminates, supported by the full ensemble of winds and percussion, in a Man mano accelerando e crescendo. In the same letter, the librettists made a suggestion regarding the Act 3 epilogue that was not taken up by the composer.

Henze, for his part, often demanded textual abridgements and changes, which the librettists did not always comply with: for example, Henze preferred to replace the edelweiss, the flower that was to be picked by the two young lovers, with another rarer alpine plant, flower, or root (see this letter). Finally, Henze, horrified by the cruel personality of the main character Gregor Mittenhofer, suggests softening the terrible impact of the tragic ending (see this letter).

The correspondence also addresses who should be entrusted with the translation of the libretto of Elegy for Young Lovers from the English original into German for the premiere at the Schlosstheater in Schwetzingen on 20 May 20 1961 (see this letter). All three think of Bachmann, however, Auden is not convinced, suggesting his brother-in-law Michael Mann. The German version was finally completed by Ludwig Landgraf with the collaboration of Werner Schachteli and the composer.

Another subject of the correspondence is the performance of Elegy for Young Lovers at Glyndebourne on 13 July 1961. The director Günther Rennert expressed some of his wishes to Henze concerning the staging and the position of the long pause in the middle of the opera, which the two librettists did not want to accept (see this letter).

The Bassarids

The trio’s written correspondence, which had been interrupted for several years, was resumed on 27 July 1964 with a letter from Kallman to Henze. Pleased with his news, Henze wrote two important letters from Castel Gandolfo on 6 August about The Bassarids, the opera premiered exactly two years later. In the first, addressed only to Kallman, he informs him that he has almost completed the composition of Der junge Lord (1964) and has already sketched out the planning for The Bassarids. Then, in the second letter - four pages addressed to his “divinities Wystan and Chester” - he wrote that he now wanted to begin composing the opera, which he affectionately referred to as “Becky”, having been greatly impressed by the manuscript of the libretto that they had sent or personally given him in the summer of 1963. He feared that he would hardly be able to cope with such a “twilight of the human being”, clearly alluding to Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, which he had seen in Vienna the year before - on the advice of the librettists. In his autobiography, Henze also mentions that both Auden and Kallman encouraged him to overcome his aesthetic aversion to Wagner (see Henze, Bohemian fifths: An Autobiography, pp. 206-207). The final scene of The Bassarids, in which the city of Thebes bursts into flames, is considered an allusion to the end of Götterdämmerung.

Henze expresses concerns about the length of the text in the same letter. He was aware of how difficult it can be for librettists to shorten verses and entire sections of text. Therefore, using the most precise mathematical calculations, he endeavoured to make the librettists understand how unbearably long their text could become with music. In a letter from Kirchstetten dated 16 August and referring directly to this subject, Auden asks Henze about the possibility of publishing the original libretto with the parts not set to music and to highlight them graphically. Auden’s request was granted: in the first printed edition of 1966, the verses that were not set to music were included in parenthesis so that readers could recognise the metrical scheme and the alternation of arias, dialogue in a quasi-recitative, choral voices, etc.

Another often-discussed topic in this correspondence concerns the title of the opera: “Bassarides” is the title of a lost tragedy by Aeschylus about another Dionysian victory, but is also a term that generally referred to the male and female participants in the procession of the god. On the advice of Erich Robertson Dodds, a philologist and friend of the librettists, the three authors chose “Bassarids” or “Bassarides” as the title, perhaps to distance themselves from Euripides’ tragedy and to make it clear from the outset that this was a reinterpretation of Euripides’ Bacchae, according to Franco Serpa (interview with Serpa, quoted in Minetti, Euripide rivisitato, p. 32). Henze was not immediately convinced by the choice: he had not been able to find anyone in his friendship circle who had ever heard this name. Later, however, Henze was also convinced of the choice and wrote to Bachmann: “Oh, yes: “Bassariden” exists in German, it’s in the Konversations-Lexikon (Knaur), just so you know. And maenads are just the females. I know all about these things now because I have many books, especially the indispensable Dodds” (Bachmann and Henze, Briefe einer Freundschaft, p. 254, translation by the author). Finally, in his letter of 23 November 1964, Auden noted the final title and names of the play’s characters and also suggested their exact accentuation.

Ten months before the Salzburg premiere of The Bassarids on 6 October 1965, Henze announced that he had completed its composition: he was not in a position to judge it, but was happy to have completed a demanding work for which he could only thank God (see this letter). In this letter, Henze complained about the opening motto of the opera “Die Mythe log...”, which is taken from a poem by the German poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956). It is the last line of a stanza from the poem Verlorenes Ich: “The world dismantled. And space and time | and what mankind wove and surged, | function only of infinities – | the mythe lied” (see Benn, Static Poems, p. 47). Henze explains that it was not pleasant for an anti-fascist like himself to associate his own name in any way with that of Benn, who, although a great poet, supported Hitler’s rise and became president of the Prussian Academy of Arts. He therefore asked, albeit in vain, to be allowed to add another quotation, to the enigmatic three words “the mythe lied”, to which only three points of omission were added right next to them.

When the libretto and music were finished, the three authors began to discuss the German translation of the libretto, which Helmut Reinold was initially commissioned to do (these letters). The letters reveal a certain dissatisfaction with Reinold’s work, and the score states that Reinold ‘arranged’ the text, but that the ‘German text version’ was by Maria Bosse-Sporleder.

The Solitudes

In the summer of 1964, Kallman suggested Henze compose a cantata for the Swedish singers Elisabeth Söderström (soprano) and Kerstin Meyer (mezzo-soprano), entitled The Solitudes: a short cycle of four poems, for soprano, mezzo-soprano with one or two pianos as accompaniment or string quartet, “as a kind of relaxation before ‘Becky’” (see this letter). Although Kallman had written the text in full, Henze “never found time to set it to music”, as he writes in his autobiography (see Henze, Bohemian fifths: An Autobiography, p. 172). A letter reproduce some of Kallman’s stanzas (quatrains) from this unfinished project (see A04145A2). There is also a brief extract (two stanzas) in Henze’s autobiography (see Henze, Bohemian fifths: An Autobiography, p. 172).

Moralities

Between 1966 and 1967 Henze and Auden also worked on the school opera Moralities based on Aesop’s fables. The correspondence also reveals that Kallman was originally going to take part in the project however, Auden became the sole author of the libretto. They did not settle on the subject of the opera until the autumn of 1966 (perhaps because they were still busy with The Bassarids, which was premiered on 6 August 1966). The school opera is mentioned for the first time in the correspondence in a letter from Auden to Henze dated 14 July 1966, in which he tells the composer that he was rather startled by the idea of a school children’s choir. In this statement, Auden was probably already alluding to the school opera as part of the Cincinnati May Festival, which was later to become Moralities. Still in the summer, on 27 August 1966, Henze made it clear in a letter to the two librettists that he had to talk to them about the school opera because he had reserved October 1966 for the composition of this work, which was to last a maximum of 30 minutes. It was not until 8 September 1966 that Henze received a letter from the two librettists in which they wrote that they had found the idea for a school opera for the Cincinnati May Festival, namely “a suite of dramatised fables by Aesop”.

The letter of 11 November 1967 with Auden’s corrections to the text of Moralities printed by Schott (on 3 July 1967 Henze wrote that he thought it was a beautiful work) is the last surviving postal document of the correspondence between Henze and the two librettists; Auden died on 29 September 1973, Kallman on 18 January 1975.