STRAUSS’ UNHAPPY ‘HELENA’ AND OTHER EXOTICA IN SANTA FE

John Crosby, the cranky visionary who runs the Santa Fe Opera, has always held a torch for the music dramas of Richard Strauss.

When Crosby inaugurated his magical, eminently unlikely open theater in the New Mexico desert 30 years ago, one of his first vehicles was “Ariadne auf Naxos.” At that dark and distant time, most Americans labored under the delusion that Strauss had created three quirky masterpieces--”Salome,” “Elektra” and “Rosenkavalier”--and then dried up like some quaint Bavarian raisin.

In the intervening decades, the Santa Fe zealots have mustered two productions of “Arabella” plus the professional U.S. premieres of “Capriccio,” “Daphne,” “Intermezzo” and “Die Liebe der Danae,” all in addition to the Big Three.

It is a repertory record unequalled by any other American company, and we hear that there are plans for “Die Schweigsame Frau” and “Die Frau ohne Schatten” in the immediate future. That, to paraphrase G. B. Shaw, will leave only three Straussian turns unstoned: the early “Guntram” and “Feuersnot,” and the bombastic “Friedenstag.”

This summer, Crosby’s dauntless fervor and favor befell “Die Aegyptische Helena,” a much-discussed, seldom-heard mythological mishmash dating back to 1928.

The Metropolitan Opera had staged this potentially fascinating work, as a showcase for the glamorous Maria Jeritza, a few months after the controversial Dresden premiere. “Helena” hadn’t been seen on an American stage since then, and the version offered in Santa Fe--a revision prepared by Strauss, conductor Clemens Kraus and director Lothar Wallerstein for Salzburg in 1933--had never been performed in this country at all.

It would be nice to be able to report that Santa Fe exhumed an unjustly neglected masterpiece. It would be wonderful to be able to say that the dubious reputation of “Die Aegyptische Helena” is undeserved. Unfortunately, one would have to be utterly dedicated and possibly myopic to ignore the inherent blowziness.

This does not mean that “Helena” should be consigned to permanent oblivion. The opera has undisputed moments of glory, and even second-rate Strauss is preferable to first-rate Sallinen (more of that later). Nevertheless, one has to put this ultimately misguided opus in aesthetic perspective.

During most of his unique collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the potentially vulgar Strauss was stimulated, inspired and properly chastened by his librettist’s poetic insight. In “Helena,” for some reason, Hofmannsthal got hopelessly bogged down in a finicky and blurry melange of Homer, Euripedes and Goethe. The inherent narrative convolutions--replete with flashbacks, flash-forwards, dream sequences, mystical flights and non-dimensional characters seemingly lifted from ancient urns--proved anti-vocal, even anti-operatic.

This, elite aficionados will recall, is the opera that lists among its dramatis personae an All-Knowing Sea Shell that happens to sing like a contralto.

Strauss and his Austrian collaborators tried to clarify and simplify the opera after the death of Hofmannsthal, knowing full well that he would have been outraged by their intrusions. Unfortunately, the intrusions weren’t enough.

After the premiere on June 6, 1928, one Dresden critic spoke for the disappointed majority. He found the opera “ponderous, complicated and apathetic . . . its dreariness a libel on the vivacious Helen of Troy.”

That was just the beginning. “Nothing,” he added, “could hide the fact that neither Strauss nor Hofmannsthal was any longer anything but mediocre.”

W. J. Henderson of the New York Sun sang a similar tune in November:

“The Metropolitan Opera has known some sorry opera librettos, but none more puerile, more futile or less interesting than this. . . . Not even a masterpiece of composition could have . . . lifted this libretto to the dignity of a drama. And Dr. Strauss has not furnished the masterpiece. . . . There is nothing new. One hears the voice of an elderly man babbling his reminiscences.”

Strauss was 64 at the time.

It is possible that he, too, was not wild about “Helena.” Stefan Zweig, one of Hofmannsthal’s successors, sat with the composer at a Salzburg rehearsal in 1933 and reported the master’s reactions:

“All at once he began to drum inaudibly and impatiently with his fingers upon the arm of the chair. Then he whispered to me: ‘Bad, very bad! That spot is blank.’ And again, after a few minutes: ‘If I could cut that out! Oh, Lord, Lord, that’s just hollow, and too long, much too long.’ ”

For all its murk, mush and padding, “Helena” still can be effective if brilliantly staged and lavishly cast. It is especially important that the heroine exude mythic glamour and erotic compulsion, and that she sing like a full-throated lustrous enchantress. That, of course, is asking a lot.

The premiere reportedly suffered from the fact that Dresden could not afford the illustrious Jeritza and had to settle instead for Elisabeth Rethberg--who apparently sounded all right but looked all wrong.

Jeritza did exude considerable redemptive charm, we are told, in Vienna and New York. The young Leonie Rysanek--though not ideal physically--enjoyed a genuine triumph in the role in Munich during the ‘50s and ‘60s.

In addition to a compelling heroine, the opera demands a masterful, sensitive conductor. Fritz Busch led the premiere. Strauss himself presided in Vienna. Artur Bodanzky took charge in New York, Leo Blech in Berlin, Clemens Krauss in Salzburg.

John Crosby cast a young American soprano, Mildred Tyree, in the title role. As is his sometimes lamentable wont, he cast himself as conductor.

At the performance of July 23, Tyree looked attractive if hardly magnetic. She sang intelligently, with nice, rich, somewhat ill-focused tone that tended to thin out at the top--just where Strauss wanted it to to blossom. The ecstatic “Zweite Brautnacht” monologue, a grateful showpiece for super-sopranos from Rosa Pauly to Leontyne Price, became an anticlimax here.

Crosby conducted earnestly, with obvious dedication, but without much flair, tension or finesse. Loud is still his favorite color.

Sheryl Woods sang the florid lines of the blue-faced sorceress Aithra sweetly if a bit too lightly. Dennis Bailey tried desperately not to choke on the impossibly high and heroic music of Menelas, and occasionally succeeded.

Michael Devlin exuded force and dignity as the warrior Altair. Glenn Siebert could do little with the lyrical platitudes of his son, Da-Ud (a tenor role entrusted to a mezzo-soprano at the Met lo those many years ago). A dignified, obviously womanly Clarity James growled the utterances of the omniscient shell while holding a presumably symbolic conch to her ear.

Goeran Jaervefelt staged the complex proceedings as simply as possible. Michael Yeargan provided stark sets and lavish costumes.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, much of the production emerged resoundingly silly. Much of the score suggested recycled ideas, empty pomp and expressive water-treading. Yet just when one wanted to give up, Strauss would come through with an incredible soaring climax, a marvelously luminous ensemble, an exquisite moment of calm amid the storms.

The lofty passages in the opera may be sporadic, but they justify patience and indulgence. Although Strauss’ genius was oddly muted in “Die Aegyptische Helena,” it certainly wasn’t extinguished.

It is hard to say the same for Aulis Sallinen’s “The King Goes Forth to France,” which received its American premiere on July 26.

The celebrated Finnish composer has created an intriguing melange of operetta cliches, tragic utterances and neo-Romantic sprawl--a melange that owes a lot to such disparate models as Orff, Weill and Shostakovich.

Paavo Haavikko, the librettist, has provided a narrative jumble about the stupidity of war. It flits from farce to satire to allegory to world-theater pathos.

Words and music, alas, do not always mesh. The opera keeps on rumbling and bumbling long after it seems to have said what it wanted to say. The cleverness becomes turgid within an hour, and this “King” goes forth for nearly three.

Santa Fe provided a brilliant production--passionately conducted by Richard Buckley, deftly staged by Alfred Kirchner, provocatively designed by John Conklin.

The large cast, led by the mellifluous if incomprehensible Mikael Melbye in the title role, demonstrated uncommon valor under stress.

Still, no one could halt the creeping, benumbing boredom.

“L’Incoronazione di Poppea,” the other novelty of the summer proved more successful.

One could argue with the picturesque exaggerations of the Baroque-oriented production as overproduced by Bliss Hebert (the director) and Allen Charles Klein (the designer). One could question some stylistic inconsistencies in Alan Curtis’ “authentic” edition of the score as realized by Kenneth Montgomery.

Nevertheless, Monteverdi’s noble antique was recreated with conviction, even with steamy urgency, by all concerned on July 25.

The uniformly fine cast included Carmen Balthrop as the scheming sensualist of the title, Judith Forst as a reasonably heroic mezzo-soprano Nero, and Katherine Ciesinski as a most human, most eloquent Empress Ottavia.

Kevin Langan brought exceptional dignity and a rolling basso to the sacrificial platitudes of Seneca. Anthony Laciura managed to make the drag routines of the nurse Arnalta comical yet not too campy. In Santa Fe, that is something of an achievement.