Until the mid-nineteenth century, opera was wedded to rhythm and rhyme. Librettists supplied composers with heaps of verse for arias and other vocal numbers, alongside chunks of prose recitative that allowed for interstitial exposition. The convention began to break down with Wagner, who expanded recitative to epic proportions.
Thus arose a genre that became known as Literaturoper , because nothing officially exists until it is named in German. Composers did not need librettists at all; they could make direct use of plays and other literary properties. Literaturoper rests on the assumption that opera suffers from excess artifice and that modern theatrical speech supplies a corrective.
The justification was also musical: intensifying experiments in harmony and rhythm called for less form-bound texts. Ne me touchez pas! Strauss, for his part, favored lunging melodic lines and stabbing dissonances. Where is the Princess? Why did she not return to the banquet as I commanded her?
There she is! In both cases, the composer releases the hidden music of the text. Yet musical values by no means suffer; casts are drawn from the upper ranks of younger American singers. The auditorium seats fewer than five hundred people, in an amphitheatre arrangement. The orchestra plays in a semi-enclosed pit, with the stage extending around it.
The singers almost brush against those sitting in the front row. They can project without great effort and can be easily heard even when they have their backs turned. All of this enables conversational directness. The Des Moines production, directed by Chas Rader-Shieber, opted for a shadowy Victorian vibe, with surrealist touches. Wall panels and wardrobe doors opened to reveal, variously, a garden, a snowdrift, and a deer carcass hanging on a gambrel.
