Die schweigsame Frau / Komische Oper in drei Aufzügen / Frei nach Ben Johnson von Stefan Zweig... Opus 80 / Potpourri / Orchester-Partitur – Conductor's Score from the Collection of Mitropoulos

Berlin: Adolph Fürstner. 1935. First Edition. Full score.  Upright folio.  Wrappers present.  Lithograph after plates engraved by Oscar Brandstetter, Leipzig-Berlin (see printer's note to foot of final page of music).  [PN] A. 8300 8306 F.  Title (lithographed from manuscript) with performing rights notice to verso; instrument list; XXIV pp.  Performing rights notice has blank filled in in manuscript (translated here), "this copy of score no. [manuscript: "12"] is intended only [continuation in manuscript] for further study by Maestro Mitropoulos in Monte Carlo." From Mitropoulos's personal collection.  18.25 x 12.25 inches (46.5 x 31.5 cm).Light wear to wrappers and corners; top right corner bumped; lower edge creased; partial separation at binding; else in fine condition.

"During the late summer of 1931 Anton Kippenberg, the publisher, called on Strauss and mentioned one of his authors, Stefan Zweig, who at this date was fifty and at the height of his popularity as novelist and biographer.  'Ask him if he has an opera libretto for me,' Strauss said...In mid-June of 1932 Zweig delivered the first section of Act 1 of Die schweigsame Frau.  'It is delightful,' Strauss told him, 'the born comic opera...more suited to music than either Figaro or The Barber of Seville...I am burning to get started on it in earnest.'"  The full score was finished in October of 1934, and the opera premiered in June of 1935.  Strauss's insistence that Zweig, a Jew, remain credited as librettist on the program at the premier led to his being asked to resign from the presidency of the Reichsmusikkammer.  Less than a month later, Die schweigsame Frau was banned throughout Germany by the Nazi Party for violating the party's proscribing of non-Aryan art.  (Michael Kennedy, Richard Strauss)  It is also noteworthy that Strauss had his music published by a company owned by a Jewish family.  Strauss, whose business partnership with Fürstner had begun in 1900, remained faithful to his publisher as long as it was possible at all, into the late 1930s.

Dimitri Mitropoulos was Greece’s most prolific conductor and New York Philharmonic Music Director from 1949-1958.  Widely regarded as one of the most significant conductors of the twentieth century, he is best remembered for his significant recorded legacy and for his commitment in bringing new compositions to the stage of major symphony orchestras.  Indeed, it is thanks to his efforts that many of our current symphonic standards made their way into the repertory.  He gave World and American premiers of seminal works such as Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 and Schoenberg’s Erwartung, as well as other major works by Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and many others.  His personal collection has been held in private hands since his death in 1960, when it passed to conductor James Dixon, his student and protégé.  Mitropoulos came to consider Dixon his son, introducing him to conductors and performing arts institutions around the world, jumpstarting his career.  When Mitropoulos died in 1960 he left all his belongings, including his scores, to Dixon.  The bulk of the musical library has been subsequently gifted to the University of Iowa’s music library, but a selection of rare items have been selected to be offered for sale exclusively by Schubertiade Music & Arts.  These examples, many inscribed to the conductor from composers or associates, have only occasional markings from the conductor himself who committed all music to memory before his first rehearsal of the repertoire - a highly unusual method!  Some of these scores, however, were also subsequently used by James Dixon as part of his working reference library for many years and include his occasional markings. (20136)

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