Kaiser Was Touchy About It

Radio Record, 1 April 1938, Page 19

Kaiser Was Touchy About It

MASTER OF THE WALTZ WAS CALLED "COURT BOSOM SNAKE"

T is well known that ex-Kaiser Wilhelm was not very partial to contradiction. Not that many people had the temerity to contradict- him. ~ Particularly was he touchy on matters of art. What the Emperor imagined he did not know about painting, musie and the stage was not much worth knowing. He was once present, for instance, at a performance of a Gluck opera. "Among those present" was Richard Strauss, Germany’s greatest living composer. When the curtain had fallen the Kaiser turned to Strauss and asked did he not think such music vastly superior to the modern music-drama? Strauss ( a modernist of modernists in those days) replied that he’ could hardly be expected to agree, . whereupon his Emperor turned to the rest of the company and said: "See what a snake I- have been warming in my bosom." . After which Strauss was for some time known as the "Court Bosom Snake." Mention of Strauss, to ‘many, still calls: to mind: the glitter-of the Viennese Waltz. But there> are five Strausses-the two Johanns, Joseph,

Edward and Richard; and waltzes are the particular monopoly of the four first-named.- It is.the fatalism of a name, therefore, that causes the general public, whenever mention is made of Richard Strauss, immediately to fasten on to the famous waltz from his opera, "Der Rosenkavalier," variously translated as "The Rose Cavalier," "The Knight of the Rose," or "The Rose Bearer." There is, of course, another Straus, Oscar Straus, of "Waltz Dream" fame. Richard Strauss in his "Rose Cavalier," displays an almost Mozartian sense of fun and melody. The composer describes his opera as a Comedy for Music. The scene is laid in Vienna (far happier than the 19388 city on the Danube), in the days of Maria Theresa, somewhere about the middle of the eighteenth century. One must hear the opera to appreciate fully the working‘out of the plot.and the music to which Strauss speeds along the happy story. The opera is.a joy. forever. .Breathes there a man with soul se dead, that it does not sway a little to those elegant waltzes-we think not! Selected passages from the charming comedy for music will be heard from 3YA on Sunday, April 3. The cast is an all-star one.