If it is true, as some have claimed, that an exhaustive list of German-language comedies could be included in that infamous library of "The World's Shortest Books" (in company with Nazi Humanism, Italian War Heroes, The Wit and Wisdom of Orrin Hatch--which is a real book, I hasten to add: I saw it not long ago in the Brigham Young University Bookstore; it consists of blank pages--A History of Nuclear Fusion in Utah, the list goes on...) if this is true then it is even more remarkable how little attention Germanists have paid, qua comedy, to a certain opera by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss, namely Der Rosenkavalier, for it may in fact be the greatest comedy in the German language.
What might account for such neglect, such an oversight? To those who would reply that the answer clearly lies in the demonstrated, presumably congenital witlessness [Witzlosigkeit] of all Germanists, in defense of our much maligned profession I offer our most eloquent post-Kantian, post-Hegelian, post-Nietzschian, and post-Heideggerian philosophical rebuttal, the bilabial fricative or metaphysische Ablehnung an sich. (Allan Bloom might consider adding this to his paranoid list of things Germanic which have supposedly insinuated themselves into American cultural life like a kind of Teutonic fluoridation of our intellectual drinking water, for on this side of the Atlantic der bilabiale Reibelaut oder metaphysische Ablehnung an sich has become known as the Bronx cheer.)
Having thus settled once and for all the issue of whether we Germanists are witless [Witzlos], we still have not accounted for why such a great comedy, Der Rosenkavalier, has not been more thoroughly investigated sub species jocularis. Perhaps its very earnestness has caused Germanists to mis-file it, for it is profoundly serious, an investigation of the great cosmic questions: time and eternity, love and lust, dignity and disgrace, Sein und Schein, Schuld und Sühne, heaven and hell, in short, the meaning of life. But it is not only cosmic it is comic, and without wishing to split either semantic or generic hairs I believe it even deserves to be thought of as a kind of divine comedy, for what great comedy in fact does not, in one way or another, treat serious matters in a manner which is at bottom as serious as any other genre?
One could understand scholars overlooking the comedic nature of Der Rosenkavalier if the work's author were not at all known as a writer of comedies, if it had been penned by someone like Franz Kafka, for example. (Which is not to imply that Kafka's works are devoid of humor! Far from it, say I.) In this case, however, another of Hofmannsthal's plays, Der Schwierige, is, in fact, one of those rare German examples of comedy that would immediately come to the mind of any Germanist pressed to list four or five of them.
Nor does Hofmannsthal hide the fact that Der Rosenkavalier is a comedy: directly underneath the title in every edition and on every playbill since it was completed in 1911 has been printed the description: "Comedy for Music by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Music by Richard Strauss."
My theory about all this is very simple: Germanists may tend to overlook comedy as a genre, since we have so few of them in the language: perhaps we even lack a rhetoric of humor (I now know, having tried to write this paper that I certainly do); but compounding the problem is our tendency to overlook operas, as well, since those with libretti of real literary quality are so few and far between.
My theory continues by suggesting, in addition, that the full critical mass of humor in Der Rosenkavalier may only be achieved when its literary humor is experienced in the context of the humor of its non-literary mediums such as music, gesture, costume, stage decor, and choreography. (Parenthetically, it may well be that only this thoroughgoing comedic support from music, gesture, costume, stage decor and choreography can make it possible for the poet to sustain betimes the most subtle strands of humor in the purely linguistic medium.) In sum, only when all these factors are fully appreciated may Der Rosenkavalier appear as the great comedy I believe it to be.
Let's start at the beginning, with the overture, and with what I consider a musical joke played by the composer on the censors and on any other musical illiterates incapable of recognizing a coitus and orgasm, albeit presumably a premature orgasm, when they hear one. [Selection 1]
When the curtain rises, this musical joke on the censors and the censorious is followed by a number of related visual ones: the passionate lovers from the overture are not in bed together (something not allowed by the censors) but--perhaps even more shocking to the censorious--are revealed to be a married woman, presumably in her thirties, namely the Marschallin, Maria Theresa, Princess von Werdenberg, a soprano, who is still in bed, and her seventeen-year old lover Count Octavian, whose role, a so-called trousers role, is played by yet an other woman, a mezzo-soprano, kneeling, again out of deference to the censors, fully clothed at the side of the bed.
A few moments later the actress playing the boy Octavian will slip a dress over Octavian's trousers and play the role of a woman playing a man playing a woman, namely the role of "Mariandl," a bucolic servant girl, thus creating a confusion of identities and of gender roles which is ultimately intended to enmesh and entrap the scoundrel of the comedy, the animalistic and chauvinistic erotomaniac Baron Ochs (Ox). But this skewer is two pronged: not only does Ox impale himself upon it because his gestalt: his biases and lusts, prevent him from seeing through the obvious masquerade, it pricks any in the audience as well who demonstrate by their shocked reaction--and there is always a shocked reaction, even today--their incapacity to immediately appreciate that they are watching a masquerade within a masquerade within a masquerade.
Visual and situational jokes continue: In the staging by the brilliant Max Reinhardt which is still exclusively used today, Ochs attempts to detain "Mariandl" at his side by "accidentally" trapping her skirt between his leg and the arm of his chair even while earnestly discussing with the Marschallin the plans for his forthcoming marriage, which is, of course, only a scheme by the penniless Baron to marry the daughter of a wealthy businessman "whose health is reportedly not the best" and get all his money. The hilariously ill-fitting and unseemly costumes, haircuts and makeup created by the great set designer Alfred Roller for Baron Ochs's retinue of malevolent bumpkins further "set the stage" for Ochs's ultimate embarrassment.
In this enriched satirical environment, which clearly borrows greatly from the tradition of the satyr-play--Ochs himself is the arch-satyr--even the most subtle linguistic jokes seem to thrive, such as the very first words of greeting by the Marschallin to the Baron Ochs who has barged into her bedchamber: "Euer Liebden sehen vortrefflich aus" (Your Loving Lordship looks superb or: You look superb, O Well-Bred Sir). (We shall see how she continues to use the phrase "Euer Liebden" (Well-Bred Sir or Your loving this or that) as a foil to Ochs's increasingly gross boasts about his sexual exploits.)
In this environment even the Baron's own words can be seen as unwitting verbal barbs which will come back to haunt him. When he attempts to arrange a tryst with "Mariandl," the Baron says, for example: "Sie könnte aus mir machen, was Sie wollte. Sie hat das Zeug dazu!" (You could make of me what you want to. You have what it takes!). Count Octavian later expressly responds to the Baron's invitation by arranging for just such a tryst where he then proceeds to make a complete ass of the Baron, or rather, he arranges for the Baron to prove in public what a complete ass he is, all of which certainly shows that Octavian has what it takes (including, but not limited to money, for he hires as his henchmen two disgruntled Italian malefactors away from the impecunious Ochs when he fails to pay them).
But I am getting ahead of the story. We have left the Baron believing he is regaling the Marschallin with endless tales of his amorous exploits. True to his zoomorphic name and nature--when he invites himself to finish the Marschallin's breakfast, for example, the stage directions read: "Er frißt" (He devours it, as of animals)--the Baron's bathetic boastings abound in animal images. He, however, thinks of himself more as a god, not as a beast: "I wish I could be like Jupiter," he effuses, "enjoying heavenly bliss in a thousand forms, there'd be a use for each one!" "What, also for the bull? Do you wish to be that coarse?" the Marschallin replies, before making a subtle reference to him as a prostitute: "I see, Well-Bred Sir, that you do it as a profession."
Ochs, oblivious to the sarcasm, continues by airing his chauvinistic views on the higher pleasures of aggressive, masculine sexuality. His metaphors reveal that he sees sex as a kind of phallic swordplay: "You can say that again. I don't know of a profession that would make me happier. I have to feel sorry for Your Grace, that your Grace possesses--how shall I express it--only defensive experiences. On my word of honor, nothing beats those on the other side."
In one of the more subtle but most unmistakable puns the Marschallin now embeds the word Mann (man) in her reply. She laughs and says: "Ich glaube ihm, daß sie sehr mannigfaltig sind" (I believe you when you say there have been all manner of them or: manifold numbers of them), thus parrying with her brilliant feminine repartee his coarse chauvinistic thrusts.
The high-point of the Baron's boasts allows Hofmannsthal and Strauss to play another musical joke. We know from their correspondence that they were considerably amused by the possibility and went to considerable trouble to arrange for the note which represents the musical climax of Ochs's solo to be at complete odds with the text of his song and to be sung on the most ignoble word in his entire aria, the word Heu, as he describes the joys of a roll in the hay.
Eventually, animal images give way to those of Satan, as the Marschallin turns the Baron's words on him once more to show him and us how far he is from being the god he imagines himself to be. And then she loses her patience with him and says angrily, in a bitter passage unrelieved by humor and which owes much of its impact to this very fact (which is another important use of humor): "The others come close but you are the utter... I see you as I see so very many. These are just games, which it suits you [men] to play! And we, God Almighty! we suffer the shame, we suffer the scorn, though we really don't deserve any better. And now, for God's sake, now for God's sake, leave the child alone!"
The Marschallin hastens to conclude her business with the Baron by showing him a picture of Octavian, whom she suggests be the Rosenkavalier, the Rose-Bearer. Ochs agrees at once (though he is amazed at how Octavian resembles "Mariandl," drawing from his adulterous view of the world the conclusion that "Mariandl" must be Octavian's illegitimate sister). Over Ochs's objections the Marschallin hastily dismisses "Mariandl" and calls for her lever to begin. Ochs does manage to ask if he might use the services of her lawyer to help him draw up a marriage contract.
The lawyer, petitioners, hairdressers, vendors, and entertainers of all kinds gathered in the antechamber burst into the room, among them two Italian intriguers who try to sell her "Die swarze Seitung" (Ze bleck newzpeper), a kind of underground scandal sheet for the upper classes. One of its secrets, the intriguers say, is that a woman and her lover have poisoned her husband. As pronounced here in a strong Italian accent however, the passage becomes even more risqué: "Eine Bürgersfrau mit der amante vergiften den Hehemann diese Nackt um dreie Huhr!" (A burger's wife with her lover poison ze husband las' night [pronounced like naked] at three o:clock [pronounced like whore]).
The Marschallin's sharp response suggests that this subject has touched a sensitive nerve, already made raw by the blatant boasting of the Baron. In fact, the Marschallin has begun to regret her affair with young Octavian, perhaps seeing in Ochs what might become of him and of her, and has begun a process of penance which will allow her to appear at the end of the opera as a glorified goddess.
Meanwhile there are more jokes of all kinds: After this unpleasant encounter with the animalistic Ochs a pet merchant tries to sell the Marschallin some animals! In the figure of a tenor whom a wealthy admirer of the Marschallin has engaged to sing for her at her lever, Hofmannsthal and Strauss arrange the ultimate send-up of the tradition of Italianate bel canto number operas. The second verse of this superficially beautiful aria is trivialized and finally completely interrupted by Ochs's loud outbursts at the lawyer's patient insistence that a certain kind of bequest is legally to be made by the brideGROOM to the BRIDE not the other way around.
The Baron has been insisting that his bride's wealthy father pay off the mortgages and liens on a certain castle and estate which used to belong to his father. The name of the place, castle Gaunersdorf (literally: swindler-village), is typical of a certain kind of verbal background humor throughout.
But let's move on to act two. Octavian, with his wonderful retinue, all dressed in cloth of silver, in ostrich feathers, in colorful silks, makes a marvelous entry as he presents the silver rose to young Sophie Faninal, Baron Ochs's fiancée. Naturally the two beautiful young people fall in love at first sight. The smell of the heavenly rose evokes a sense of déjà vu involving heavenly gardens and they sing an almost unbearably beautiful duet about their love which will last for "Zeit und Ewigkeit" (Time and Eternity). Though there is nothing particularly humorous about this important scene per se, I mention it [and if pressed, would be happy to play an excerpt from it] because it is also a set-up for the subsequent botched entry of the Baron, who comes in the back door, his motley crew looking even more bedraggled in comparison with Octavian's splendid retinue, his boorish behavior all the more contemptible in contrast to Octavian's genteel manners.
"Deliziös!" (delicious!) is this animalistic gourmand's first word to Sophie. His next comment is a compliment which amounts to an insult, namely that her wrist is slender, a rare distinction among those of her class. He congratulates her father for serving an old Tokay with a young girl and compares her shoulders to that of a fried chicken. Next he calls her skinny as a dog, then he calls her a young filly and offers to let Octavian "break" her for him.
(Meanwhile Octavian is literally enduring the flames of hell as he becomes a new man by entering something akin to purgatory. "I'm standing on glowing coals," he says, "I'm going out of my skin! In this one hour I atone for all my sins!")
Eventually, in a hilarious sword-fight, Octavian slightly wounds the Baron and sends his retinue into headlong flight, after which the Baron reveals that he cannot stand the sight of his own blood and threatens to faint. Herr Faninal's egocentric and parvenu reactions to this scandal add even more comic value to the scene and they please the Baron by giving him something to hold over Faninal's head.
At this juncture the two Italian intriguers go over to Octavian's side and deliver a note, ostensibly from "Mariandl" to the Baron, inviting him to meet her at a sleazy tavern on the edge of town. The Baron is pleased at this development and arranges to reply in the affirmative. Act three then, is the comic climax of the opera, the grand finale of the farce where layer upon layer of the masquerade are peeled away to reveal a final, cosmic joke.
With apologies to those of you who know Der Rosenkavalier well, allow me to set the scene for the prelude to the cosmic joke, namely an elaborate practical joke arranged for by Octavian: Octavian has hired a room in an inn, has positioned some of his people behind trap-doors in the floor and in the walls with instructions for them to pop out on a prearranged signal, has engaged the Italian woman Annina and some children to pose as the Baron's wife and kids, has dressed himself up as "Mariandl," and has laid plans to send someone to bring Herr Faninal to the scene when the Baron is in the most embarrassing position, appearing to be an engaged bigamist with a mistress to boot.
Octavian's plan goes forward, with a few minor hitches, which only make it work out even better than planned, for Ochs has gone around the room extinguishing candles (both to save money and to make a more romantic ambience in which to woo Mariandl) so it is too dark for him to see Octavian's face very clearly.
Still, when he leans near to give Mariandl a kiss, he is suddenly reminded of Octavian. And then, when someone pops up out of the floor too soon, the Baron begins to think he is ill and imagining things. Finally, when Annina and the children arrive, who incessantly cry out "Papa, Papa, Papa", the Baron runs to a window and calls for the police, only to be confronted a moment later by officers of the morals squad who say they hope he is not one of those "god-damned debauchers."
He has taken off his wig, symbol of the nobility, and cannot find it, which prevents him from pulling his baronial rank on the cops. (Parenthetically, this is also an obvious reference to the most famous German comedy of all, Heinrich von Kleist's The Broken Jug, in which a similar lost wig and lost virtue play a most important role.)
The Baron attempts to lie his way out of the situation by telling the officers that Mariandl is in fact his fiancée Sophie Faninal. But just at that point Faninal arrives, followed momentarily by Sophie.
At the moment of greatest confusion something happens that Octavian had not planned for, and for which there is no natural explanation any where in the opera: as dea ex machina the glorious Marschallin arrives on the scene dressed in her most beautiful courtly gown. The policeman, once her husband's orderly, is happy to take her word for the fact that this is all a Viennese masquerade. She dismisses Ochs who stands as if he had been pole-axed (the stage directions read: "Baron aus allen Himmeln gefallen" (literally: The Baron fallen from all heavens, i.e. The Baron is struck dumb), she tells an astonished Octavian that he should cross the stage to Sophie whom he obviously loves, to comfort and reassure her. The Marschallin then offers to salve the wounded pride of Herr Faninal by driving him home in her coach.
The joke is therefore not only on the Baron, who makes his ignominious retreat pursued by hordes of creditors: the joke is on Octavian, on Sophie, on Faninal, and ultimately on the audience, and on deadly serious literary critics. The Marschallin has sworn an oath to love Octavian in the "proper manner" so that she "could even love his love to another." She has done her penance by going to church and by making her old Uncle Greifenklau happy by dining with him.
When Faninal offers a most shallow explanation of the plot of the opera by saying: "Well, that's just the way today's young people are" she utters the most profound words of the opera: "Ja, Ja" in which all the great wisdom, and the great humor, really, of her resignation reside. It is in my opinion one of the greatest examples in literature anywhere of understatement, of a word being worth a thousand pictures, so to speak.
But the joke is not quite over: As the Marschallin and Faninal exeunt, Sophie and Octavian are left alone on the stage for a final kiss. Before she leaves the stage Sophie drops her handkerchief. "Aha" not a few literary critics have cried, "an obvious symbol of a flirtation. Clearly the cycle of adultery, of deception, of masquerade continues."
But Hofmannsthal and Strauss do not end the opera here. Instead they write a coda in which little Mohammed, the Marschallin's adorable servant boy, whose musical motif is a delightful little scuttling melody, is sent back onstage to pick up the fateful handkerchief. On the darkened stage he carries a candle about. The audience knows where the handkerchief lies. Will he find it? Let's see if you can tell from the music. We pick this up at the final great trio [if there's time: otherwise just play last bit] to the end.
My reading of the play suggests that the Marschallin as dea ex machina has sent her messenger, her guardian angel, precisely to preclude any more flirtations and to have a last laugh at literary critics who believe otherwise. It is her more refined way of giving them a Bronx cheer. Thank you.