The rarely performed, often maligned Friedenstag is one of Strauss's most underrated works: a powerful testament to the horrors of war and a plea for peace, first performed in Nazi Germany.
The powerful one-act work has some of Strauss's most impressive choral and orchestral writing: the starving townsfolk demanding bread; the bells sounding for the first time in years, announcing peace; and the radiant C-major finale, Fidelio for a post-Mahlerian age.
Why, then, is Friedenstag so little known? One problem may be that it doesn't what do Strauss's operas are supposed to do. Most of his operas are either elegant, witty and wry, or hothouse shockers, as decadent and luxuriant as a Rafflesia. This serious, rather earnest, treatment of war is a far cry from the Rococo Vienna of Der Rosenkavalier and the metafictional Ariadne auf Naxos, or the nightmarish Salome and Elektra.
Some critics have also accused Strauss of trying to curry favour with the Nazis with this opera. It was the first major opera composed under National Socialism, and they point to the fact that the appeal to peace as a call to arms, the notion of a unified Germany, and the mythologizing of the Thirty Years' War were all part of Hitlerian propaganda. This interpretation is unlikely.
Strauss (who detested the Nazis [see below]) and his librettists – the writer Stefan Zweig, a Jewish pacifist and internationalist, and, after Zweig fled to London, his replacement Joseph Gregor – considered the opera "a hymn to the reconciliation of nations" and "a work extolling the union of peoples" – a stance at odds with the Nazis, who banned the work from stage performance after 1939.
War is dehumanizing. "Was ist das: Friede?" asks a musketeer. The soldiers don't know; they've been fighting since they were children. They have lost any compassion for the people they are meant to protect. Even when they see a farm set on fire, they only wonder what it means about the enemy's movements – "nothing". They don't care about the peasant whose home and crops have been destroyed.
The heart of the opera is the Kommandant's wife Maria. She obviously appealed to Strauss's sympathy, and he wrote one of his typically lyrical soprano arias for her.
She is the only named character in the opera – but, like the Madonna, whose name she bears, she is a spiritual intercessor. She is the comforter of war's sufferers and the poor people; and she intervenes when the commanders of the two armies are about to come to blows, launching the opera's glorious choral finale.
No, Strauss wasn't a Nazi, or a Nazi sympathizer. This old accusation still gets trotted out.
Yes, Strauss accepted the post of president of the Reichsmusikkammer, partly because he thought he could secure better copyright arrangements for composers, and he wanted to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren. He soon fell out of favor, and was ordered to resign when the Nazis intercepted a letter to Zweig criticizing the regime.
Zweig wrote the libretto for Strauss's comic opera Die schweigsame Frau. The Nazis pulled the opera after three performances, when Strauss, to his credit, refused to remove the Jewish Zweig's name from the programme.
The opera takes place on 22 October 1684, the last day of the Thirty Years' War, the deadliest European religious war in history, pitting Catholics against Protestants. A Catholic town is besieged by the Protestant Holsteiner army. The Commandant of the citadel has sworn never to surrender the town, and intends to blow up the citadel rather than let it fall into enemy hands. The Holstein army advances – but it turns out that they are not attacking. The armistice has been signed, and the decades-long war is over.
In 1848, the year the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War, a German Catholic town is besieged by the Holsteiner Protestants. A young Piedmontese brings a letter from the emperor to the Commander of the city, exhorting him to defend it cost what it may. The starving townsfolk attack the citadel, the Mayor and the Bishop beg the Commandant to yield, while the Front-line Officer's request for ammunition stored under the citadel is denied. The Commandant asks the crowd to wait until midday. They leave, he asks his soldiers to heap the munitions under the citadel, and give him a wick. He reminds the Sergeant how he saved his life at Magdebourg, the worst massacre of the Thirty Years' War, and asks him to escape once his work is done. The Sergeant, Weaponer and Soldier refuse to abandon him. Maria, the Commandant's wife, deplores her fate, and is anxious about the rumours that run through the town.
Her worst fears are confirmed when the Commandant tells her that he will blow up the citadel. She swears to die with him. Nevertheless, when the Sergeant announces another enemy attack, the Commandant extinguishes the wick, preferring to die in battle. Suddenly, bells sound throughout the city: the enemy is approaching with flowers in their rifles, white flags flying in the wind. The Commandant suspects a trap, and when the Holsteiner tells him the armistice of Munster has been signed, the Commandant becomes hostile and mistrustful; not even Maria's joy can shake him. The Commandant unsheathes his sword and attacks the Holsteiner, who defends himself. Only Maria's intervention stops the duel.
All the people – Maria, the two commanders, their armies, the townspeople, the church – come together in one surging sea of humanity and sing an exultant hymn to peace, as the citadel tower sinks into the stage and sunlight floods the theatre.
Listen to: Wolfgang Sawallisch, 1988, with Bernd Weikl, Sabine Hass, Jaako Ryhänen, and Jan-Hendrik Rootering. EMI. A fine cast, clear orchestration, and apparently more complete than Giuseppe Sinopoli's 1999 Deutsche Grammophon recording.
Fans of archival recordings may want to check out the 1939 Vienna recording, starring the original Kommandant (Hans Hotter) and Maria ( Viorica Ursuleac).