MELODRAMA

ENOCH ARDEN

MELODRAMA

ENOCH ARDEN

Photo: Elvis Šmit

Ana Pogorelić, narration

Tea Kulaš, organ

Richard Strauss: Enoch Arden, op. 38 (Henok Arden, translation: Mate Maras)

Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809.-1892.), an English poet and Fellow of the Royal Society of London, served as Poet Laureate from 1850 and was the leading poet of the Victorian era. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest British poets and is the ninth most quoted poet of all time. Some of his lines have become well-known phrases in the English language, such as “Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all” or “Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers“.

His best-known poetic works include the elegy In Memoriam A.H.H., in which he mourns the death of his friend Arthur Hallam (1850) and which provided lasting solace to Queen Victoria after the death of her husband, Prince Albert, as well as the “obscure and morbid” long poem Maud (1855), written in various metres. He also wrote several plays, the most famous of which are Queen Mary (1875) and Harold (1876).

The poem Enoch Arden (1864) is based on a true story about a sailor who was thought to have drowned but returned after several years to find that his wife had remarried. Not wishing to disturb the peace she has found, he dies of a broken heart.

Based on the verses of this poem, in the German translation by Adolf Strodtmann, Richard Strauss (1864.-1949.) – an Austrian composer of late Romanticism and early Modernism – wrote a composition for voice (narrator) and piano accompaniment in 1897. In this work, the dramatic presentation is primary, with the music serving as accompaniment. Nevertheless, the music itself is also dramatized: leitmotifs run throughout the piece – musical melodies and phrases that characterize particular characters or concepts (such as the sea) – and solo passages, including preludes and postludes, also appear.

This musical genre is known as melodrama and was very popular at the time. Richard Strauss himself performed the work with the actor Ernst von Possart, to great acclaim. Although melodrama as a musical genre rather quickly fell out of fashion, this particular work was later performed by renowned actors and singers such as Michael York and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. The first sound recording was made by Claude Rains, with pianist Glenn Gould.

In Zagreb in the 1990s, this melodrama, translated by Mate Maras, was successfully performed by actress Alma Prica and pianist Đorđe Stanetti. After that, it was not performed in Croatia again until 2017, when it was prepared and performed by Bojana Gregorić Vejzović and Danijel Detoni, exclusively for PagArtFestival.

We would like to thank Mr. Maras for providing the translation.

PagArtFestival

Performances:
– PagArtFestival, zborna crkva Marijinog uznesenja, Pag, 20.8.2025.
– Zadar Organ Festival, crkva sv. Nikole, Zadar, 11.9.2025.