Karajan artists: Jean Cocteau – the poet as the speaker

No wonder Karajan was fascinated. Jean Cocteau was one of the last universal artists, a poet, painter, actor, filmmaker and stage designer. There was simply no one in Parisian artistic circles between 1909 and 1963 Cocteau didn’t know: Marcel Proust, André Gide, Edmond Rostand, Amedeo Modigliani, Edith Piaf, Albert Camus and Charles Chaplin. He worked with Stravinsky, Satie, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, Diaghilev, Picasso and Coco Chanel. In 1927, he wrote the libretto for Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex”. The opera/oratorio was produced by the Ballets Russes and was first performed with the set and costume design by Stravinsky’s 20-year-old son Théodore but only in a concert version (a disappointment for the audience).
The first full scenic version was at the Vienna State Opera a year later with Franz Schalk conducting. It is quite likely that the 20-year-old Karajan, at this time a student at the Vienna Conservatory, attended it. Schalk, who was also manager of the State Opera (temporarily with Richard Strauss), was not Karajan’s teacher but given his position he was certainly a role model. Schalk was a pupil of Bruckner and Kapellmeister during Mahler’s era at the State Opera. He performed Strauss’ “Frau ohne Schatten” and Schmidt’s symphonies Nr. 2 and 3 for the first time. And he was an important figure for the foundation of the Salzburg Festival in 1920.

Maybe Karajan remembered this when he – as manager of the State Opera himself – conducted a new production of “Oedipus Rex” thirty years after the first one. Martha Mödl, Waldemar Kmentt and Gottlob Frick took the main parts and the famous duo Oscar Fritz Schuh/Caspar Neher did the staging. The clou for the premiere was the participation of Cocteau himself as the speaker. Karajan recalled this when talking to Richard Osborne in 1989:

“He came to Vienna for our performances of Oedipus rex; he was the Narrator. He was a unique person with a fascinating understanding of the arts in all their forms. I collected him from the airport and he scarcely drew breath! Yet everything he talked of was clear and at the tip of his tongue.”

—  P.R. Jenkins