Comments on: Lehár’s “Giuditta”: The Splendour and Misery of the Exchangeable

By: Alex Segal

Alex Segal — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 23:32:54 +0000

Apologies for completely misunderstanding you. I thought you were contrasting Lehár and Dostal to highlight the proximity of Lehár to Nazi rhetoric. So I assumed you were picturing Dostal as being less proximate to Nazi rhetoric than Lehár. Although I am embarrassed at having misread you so badly, I do strongly disagree with your contention that it is very obvious that Lehar’s “Giuditta” has a great proximity to Nazi rhetoric. Such a proximity may well exist. But it is not an obvious proximity.

By: Mathias Spohr

Mathias Spohr — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 22:09:38 +0000

That’s what I mean. The ideology of the romantic duet and of love of country (good desire!) is closer to the fundamentalist Nazi ideology than to the neutral and ambivalent representation of desire that we see in Poppea and then again in Giuditta. The ambivalence of the I’m-pathetic-but-I-want-to-be-great attitude of Goebbels and his loyal audience, which Giuditta in a way shares, is harder to see as good than romantic love.

By: Alex Segal

Alex Segal — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 19:56:28 +0000

Thanks Mathias for your most recent comments. As I understand it, in order to explain the proximity of Lehar’s operetta Giuditta to Nazi rhetoric, you ascribe “boundless liberation of desire” both to the Giuditta love duet and to Nazism. You see the same boundless liberation of desire in the love duet at the end of Monteverdi’s Poppaea. What you say seems to imply that Monteverdi’s opera is proximate to Nazi rhetoric in the same way as is Lehar’s operetta. On the face of it, this view of Monteverdi seems anachronistic – I think it needs more defence than you provide. Also, inasmuch as you contrast the Giuditta duet with the kind of love duet one finds in a Dostal operetta, you seem to imply that the kind of proximity to Nazi rhetoric that one finds in Lehar’s Giuditta is not found in Dostal. This implication of what you say surprises me. I think it needs more explicit defence than you provide. (I would have thought that the sentimentality that you ascribe to Dostal makes his work more rather than less proximate to Nazi rhetoric.)

By: Mathias Spohr

Mathias Spohr — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 16:55:53 +0000

I mean the following contradiction: The burning but apparently good desire for “Heimatland” or marriage in a Nico Dostal operetta is as ambivalent as any other desire. It can be inhuman if it marginalizes or expels others. Giuditta’s and Octavio’s sensual desire as a potentially dangerous energy is not necessarily good—it is more honest than a sentimental love duet. Am I still being unclear?

By: Mathias Spohr

Mathias Spohr — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 22:20:55 +0000

Desire is only presented, without saying at the same time: this is the good desire you should have!

By: Alex Segal

Alex Segal — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:58:05 +0000

I can see why the Nero/Poppaea duet can be described as “the triumph of a ruling couple walking over dead bodies”. But it is not obvious to me that this description fits the Giuditta/Octavio duet or the duet of a gay couple showing the liberation of desire.

By: Mathias Spohr

Mathias Spohr — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:24:55 +0000

No need to apologize, Alex! The theme remains difficult and interesting. The love duet between Giuditta and Octavio, certainly one of Lehár’s greatest achievements, does not say to the young couples in the audience: this is the desire you are allowed to have, take it as a model. It reminds me of the first love duet in opera that is considered expressive and touching, that between Nero and Poppea in Monteverdi’s ‘L’incoronazione di Poppea’(1642). It is the triumph of a ruling couple walking over dead bodies. With the same effect, it could be the love duet of a queer couple, showing the fascinating and ambivalent liberation of desire. In between is the period of 18th/19th century identities, such as gender identity or national identity. Nazism was a fundamentalist variant of this.

By: Alex Segal

Alex Segal — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 22:50:27 +0000

Thank you Mathias. I apologise for my having misread your article. I thought that the article was offering a critique of the librettists for their proximity to Nazi rhetoric. But inasmuch as your view is that this proximity involves no affirmation of Nazi rhetoric, I think I badly misinterpreted your position.Apologies.

By: Mathias Spohr

Mathias Spohr — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 15:45:46 +0000

Thank you, Alex, for your reply. Yes, the Nazis did not create original ideas, but combined existing ideas to form their world view. As you rightly say, there are elements in the libretto that do not fit with Nazism, mainly the failure of Giuditta’s ideology. The protagonists don’t find a relationship in the end. I believe that Giuditta is neither an affirmation nor a parody of Nazi rhetoric, but that the authors took up what was on people’s minds at the time. The boundless liberation of desire is what Giuditta has in common with Nazism. That was a hot topic at the time.

By: Alex Segal

Alex Segal — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 14:33:43 +0000

Thanks very much Matthias for your explanation. I have to say though that the idea that combining non-Nazi elements yields something Nazi is not obvious to me.

Also, inasmuch as Nietzsche appears to praise Carmen for her African quality, his attitude is on the face of it quite remote from Nazism.

By: Mathias Spohr

Mathias Spohr — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 07:20:47 +0000

I don’t know a translation, but what Frey states is something very obvious. Quotes such as ‘Die Erde trägt ihr Hochzeitskleid’ (Hermann Löns: Es singt der Star, 1924) or the “African” quality of the Carmen-like main character (Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner 1888) are not National Socialist in themselves, and the biblical vocabulary used in an anti-religious way can also be found in Bert Brecht, who cannot be said to have been close to National Socialism. But in this combination of elements, the proximity to Nazi rhetoric is obvious. Löns and Nietzsche were held in highly regarded by the Nazis. “Ausdruckstanz” was also used ideologically by the Nazis.

By: Alex Segal

Alex Segal — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 21:53:25 +0000

Does anyone know if there is an English translation of the text in which Stefan Frey argues that the librettists have put “fragments of Nazi ideology into Giuditta’s mouth”?