The shadow of the empress : fairy-tale opera and the end of the Habsburg monarchy / Larry Wolff.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wolff, Larry, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Opera--Political aspects--Austria--History--20th century.

Opera.

Austria--History--1918-1938.

Austria.

Strauss, Richard, 1864-1949. Frau ohne Schatten.

Strauss, Richard.

Zita, Empress, consort of Charles I, Emperor of Austria, 1892-1989.

Zita.

Charles I, Emperor of Austria, 1887-1922.

Charles.

Habsburg, House of.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (452 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2023]

Summary:

In 1919 the last Habsburg rulers, Emperor Karl and Empress Zita, left Austria, going into exile. That same year, the fairy-tale opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow), featuring a mythological emperor and empress, premiered at the Vienna Opera. Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and German composer Richard Strauss created Die Frau ohne Schatten through the bitter years of World War I, imagining it would triumphantly appear after the victory of the German and Habsburg empires. Instead, the premiere came in the aftermath of catastrophic defeat. The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy explores how the changing circumstances of politics and society transformed their opera and its cultural meanings before, during, and after the First World War. Strauss and Hofmannsthal turned emperors and empresses into fantastic fairy-tale characters; meanwhile, following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy after the war, their real-life counterparts, removed from political life in Europe, began to be regarded as anachronistic, semi-mythological figures. Reflecting on the seismic cultural shifts that rocked post-imperial Europe, Larry Wolff follows the story of Karl and Zita after the loss of their thrones. Karl died in 1922, but Zita lived through the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the Cold War. By the time of her death in 1989, she had herself become a fairy-tale figure, a totem of imperial nostalgia. Wolff weaves together the story of the opera's composition and performance; the end of the Habsburg monarchy; and his own family's life in and exile from Central Europe, providing a rich new understanding of Europe's cataclysmic 20th century, and our contemporary relationship to it.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I. Prewar fairy- tale empire

1 Hofmannsthal’s Viennese Celebrity and Princess Zita’s Habsburg Marriage

2 Emblems of Imperial Marriage

3 Descent from the Imperial Heights

4 Marriage and Childbirth in the Imperial Dynasty and the Fairy- Tale Opera

5 “A Traitor Wind”

6 Hexentanz

PART II. Wartime habsburg catastrophe, operatic transfiguration

7 Menschenblut

8 “The Shadow Hovering in the Air”

9 “Spirit of the Carpathians”

10 The Empress at the Threshold

11 Empress Zita

12 Departure from Schönbrunn

PART III. Postwar the afterlives of empresses

13 The Emperor and the Empress

14 Premiere 1919

15 Imperial Afterlife

16 “The Thread of Past Time”

17 Nazi Germany and Austrian Anschluss

18 The Empress in America

19 The Empress Returns

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes index.

Other Format:

Print version: Wolff, Larry The Shadow of the Empress

ISBN:

9781503635654

1503635651