Word: madwomen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Giraudoux's play needs Miss Singewald. Its concave philosophy -- the rich, destructive, conformist bad guys against the poor, poetic good guys -- wouldn't float in the Dead Sea without a strong focus on the heroine. For example, it all comes right in the second act, as three madwomen (Miss Singewald, Valerie Clark, and Carla Barringer) amicably enter Miss Singewald's basement to plan the elimination of the world's evil men. They attack each other, apologize, criticize, contradict, dare, resolve, shift positions, and conclude as amicably as when they came in. And in the end, the world's evil...
...seen before and would not see again until Berg's Wozzeck. All in all, the audience tended to agree with the fabled Ernestine Schumann-Heink, who sang the first Klytaemnestra but vowed never to do it again. "It was frightful," said she. "We were a set of madwomen. There is nothing beyond Elektra. We have lived to reach the farthest boundary in dramatic writing for the voice with Wagner. But Strauss goes beyond...
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