Cacher la profondeur

Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal Text

Richard Strauss Operas extracts
Elektra (1909)
Der Rosenkavalier (1910)
Ariadne auf Naxos (1916)
Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919)
Die ägyptische Helena (1928)
Arabella (1933)

Cacher la profondeur is a story of friendship between two exceptional men. Friendship whose fruits will have marked the Europe of the twentieth century.

Thirty years of correspondence between the Bavarian composer Richard Strauss and the Viennese intellectual Hugo von Hofmannsthal allow us to enter into the intimacy of their relationship and the mystery of their common writing, which gave birth to six extremely important operas.

Contrary to the custom of the time, which often makes librettists mere performers of composers, the collaboration of the two men begins immediately on an equal footing. The creative process is only more complex. The strength of their respective convictions constantly puts the relationship in danger. But their honesty brings them together. Gradually, the bond that unites them becomes imperceptibly indestructible and, curiously, time allows them to go further in the formulation of their differences. Incompatibility, impossibility, continue to seek them tirelessly.

Strikingly, how is it that these two men write for years to create characters almost exclusively female - though sometimes androgynous? What do these heroines teach us about the artists' personalities, about their projections, their fears, their fantasies, their wives? This major testimony of the history of music makes us discover the musical and literary stakes of this period, marked by terrible political conflicts in Europe, as well as by a revolution of musical writing and a questioning of the image. of the woman.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Hide Depth" summarizes a remarkable attitude of the two artists in dialogue with their characters: restraint, modesty, but an uncompromising sharpness that makes us touch "unfathomable depths of our own nature".

Aliénor Dauchez

According to the "Correspondence" of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal,
translated from German by Bernard Banoun
© Editions Fayard, 1992 for the French translation. All rights reserved.

With the support of

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