STORKS AND OSTRICHES: AN EARLY PARODY OF STRAUSS'S ‘ARIADNE AUF NAXOS’

Extract

The name of the conductor Max Conrad is hardly one to conjure with. He admitted as much himself in the first paragraph of his memoirs, published in 1956: To be sure, I was born in Berlin, as was [Bruno Walter]; he attended the Askanische High School in Berlin – as did I; he left it without finishing his school leaving certificate – as did I; he studied music with teachers from the Stern Conservatory – as did I; and he soon became famous – and I … oh dear, now it becomes irregular, like a Greek verb …

For more than 30 years, Conrad (1872–1963) played a major role in the operatic life of Zurich. In the greater scheme of things, this might perhaps be regarded as of little significance, for Zurich's was then but a theatre in the outer provinces of the German-speaking world. Nor did Conrad achieve recognition by conducting important premières there, as did other men (such as Robert F. Denzler, who conducted the world premières of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler and Berg's Lulu in the 1930s, or Hans Rosbaud, who conducted the staged première of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron in 1957). Conrad did train the flower maidens for the first (legal) performance of Wagner's Parsifal outside Bayreuth, given in Zurich in 1913 – but the première itself was conducted by the chief kapellmeister, Lothar Kempter. To be sure, Conrad did conduct the world première of the revised version of Othmar Schoeck's fine expressionist opera Penthesilea in 1928; but that is hardly enough to ensure anyone posthumous fame.