A series of blogs identifying five general categories of the nurse character’s role in operas from the mid-seventeenth through the early twenty-first century. The categories are fluid and overlap, so that the nurse character can and usually does appear in more than one category within an opera. Taken from a careful study of librettos and available performances of a hundred-plus operas with at least one nurse character.
Scheming Nurses: Die Amme
The Woman Without a Shadow by Richard Strauss, Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal Premiered in Vienna, 1919
The Empress, a character of the spirit world who has assumed human form, must demonstrate her fertility by casting a shadow within three days, or her Emperor husband, to whom she has been married just under a year, will turn to stone. Relying on her nurse Die Amme’s magical powers, she embarks on a journey to the human world to obtain a shadow from the dyer Barak’s wife who has decided to remain childless. With witch-like powers, Die Amme conjures up pretty things and even a potential lover to entice Barak’s wife to part with her shadow. But at the point when the devious mission is almost accomplished, the Empress has pity on the couple and refuses to drink the water of life that would deny the wife her shadow permanently. Her act of compassion – a sentiment foreign to the nurse – saves the Emperor from his fate. The Emperor and Empress are reunited for what could be a life filled with children; the nurse is banished to life in the human world, which she detests.
PART 3
Max Schultz notes that
In its relatively long history, the Faust legend has spawned a goodly number of the male gender foolishly ready to bargain away their souls in the dubious effort to satisfy their unappeasable desires for power, knowledge, or worldly gain of one sort or another. … One has to think hard and long, though, for instances of women equally profligate with their souls. 39
Schultz has found one, however, in the nurse character in Die Frau ohne Schatten: “Besides the pact she negotiates with the Dyer’s Wife, the price being the Wife’s shadow, the Nurse’s quick tongue and skills in magic identify her as a descendent of Goethe’s Mephistopheles.” 40
Is Die Amme a female Mephistopheles – the Devil incarnate – as Schultz has suggested? Or is she more akin to Albright’s notion of the witches in Macbeth, with the demonic persona of an ordinary old woman gone astray? “The power of witches in fact springs from their ambiguity,” Albright writes about Macbeth. 41 The same could be said for Die Amme in Die Frau ohne Schatten, whose actions leave the audience wondering, at least initially, whether her intentions of helping the Empress to obtain a shadow are altruistic or are self-serving, given her unorthodox methods. To Thomas Kovach, the nurse in Die Frau ohne Schatten represents “humanity in its basest form … in her embodiment of human cruelty and deceptiveness.” 42 The nurse brings out in Barak’s wife “what is basest in herself” at the same time that “the empress represents her conscience, and her silent presence seems a reproach.” 43
This difference in character between Die Amme and the Empress is made clearer when one considers the symbols with which each is associated in the opera. In an analysis of the text and music of Die Frau ohne Schatten and their relationship in the opera, Sherrill Pantle identifies symbols that Hofmannsthal used in the libretto for each character, some of which are present in the text that each woman sings. Both Die Amme and the Empress are linked to certain animals, making such a comparison illustrative. Symbols pertaining to the Nurse include the snake, the night bird, and the dog. Animals with which the Empress is associated are greater in number because of the talisman’s transformative powers: gazelle, bird, and fish, as well as otter, snake, and kite. 44
Die Amme is likened to a snake not only because of her reptilian appearance and clothing choice, but also for her devious methods to obtain a shadow for the Empress. In the Erzählung – though not in the opera – when lost in the wild terrain of the spirit world, trying to escape the wrath of Keikobad and the Messenger, who will dole out her punishment, the nurse sees and hears only a night bird, a predator, but in this case Hofmannsthal’s imagery suggests that Die Amme as bird of prey has become the prey, perhaps as payback for having preyed upon others to satisfy her own agenda.
Die Amme likens herself to a dog. When the Emperor, who has arisen before daybreak, is ready to leave the palace, he calls for the Nurse. “Are you awake?” She answers, “Awake, and lying like a dog across your threshold!” Although Die Amme refers to her watchfulness over the Empress as like that of a dog, hers is a false loyalty to her mistress, not the unconditional loyalty that dogs offer. When trying to convince the Empress to escape the fate that Keikobad surely has planned for his daughter, Die Amme offers to help the Empress find her husband, with the cold-hearted concession: “I will endure seeing him in your arms for years to come, and remain a dog in his house!” 45 Hündin, the word that Hofmannsthal uses in the Erzählung, is German for a female dog. That a female dog in English is referred to as a “bitch,” which is also slang for a malicious or spiteful woman, makes this symbol particularly apt for Die Amme.
Hofmannsthal clearly perceived Die Amme as witch-like, if not an actual witch, for in translated correspondence with Strauss dated 8 July 1914, as he was working out the details of Die Amme’s visit to Barak’s household and the contract she would propose to the dyer’s wife, the librettist refers to the nurse performing “a veritable witch’s dance until she proclaims her triumph A, B, C, D, to all the four points of the compass” once Barak’s wife agrees to give up her shadow. 46 In his 12 July 1914 reply responding to Strauss’s feedback, Hofmannsthal wrote:
The Woman has her say, then there must be a distinct break for the Nurse to grasp the good news; then she herself speaks out, decisively and powerfully, … First come the words essential for the listeners’ understanding. She must begin in a tone of joyful surprise and assent (something like the following trivial phrases: “Bravo! You’ve got it! Hurrah … Got it! that’s it!)” 47
After a “significant orchestral passage,” the nurse prances about “in a frenzy of delight” while singing to Barak’s wife a passage about abandoning motherhood forever in her soul. Hofmannsthal asks Strauss, “Would this suggestion of witch-like dancing around provide a rhythm which you can use at this point?” 48
Strauss must have had another suggestion, for no witch’s dance appears as stage directions in the opera’s music score. Barak’s wife calls the nurse a witch to her face – an accusation the nurse does not deny – in the Erzählung. Accusing the old crone of being “a paid go-between and deceiver” who performs “tricks to turn my head,” the wife shouts, “My slipper in your face, you witch” for “making me really feel my misery.” 49
Hanna Schwarz, who has sung the role of Die Amme in a Metropolitan Opera production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, plays up the character’s “devilish side as “a kind of amoral Eulenspiegel figure”:
She doesn’t relate to the quest of becoming human, which is what the Kaiser and Kaiserin [Emperor and Empress] are after, and what Barak has already achieved in his kind of Buddhist way – being there in the moment and feeling fine about it. In [Hans Hollmann’s] Dresden production, at the end the Nurse was left sitting on a valise, waiting to go on to her next job. There is no change for her. She’s a spirit and yet the most down-to-earth person in the opera, who comments on “all this crap” the others are doing. Yes, she is maybe like the devil, like Al Pacino in that movie [Devil’s Advocate]. She knows people’s weaknesses and she does evil simply because she can. She would drop the atom bomb if she had one. She has no lyrical moments like the other principals. She just gets more and more furious. This Amme is not a warm, mothering Amme with a big bosom but, at least in Dresden, a contradiction in cap and bells and tight pants. 50
Marjana Lipovšek, who sings the role of Die Amme in the 1992 Salzburg Summer Festival production, is a convincing witch, having sung the witch’s role in Hänsel und Gretel as well. Her sneering expression with wrinkled nose in the Strauss opera clearly conveys the contempt she feels for everything human, and she slithers as she walks. Her black and white caftan and even her hairstyle of cornrows braided close to the head and away from her face are reptilian in appearance. 51
Sarah Colvin’s examination of how Baroque Hamburg opera libretti reveal two opposing types of women, the classical witch and the Christian martyr, offers a perspective from which to consider the roles of the Empress and her nurse, as well as Barak’s wife, in Die Frau ohne Schatten. Colvin notes that Baroque writers’ tendency “to treat their protagonists as puppets or props on which to hang ideas reaches an extreme on the opera stage,” where characters are classified easily as exemplifying standard virtues, thus positive, or standard vices, thus negative. 52 The contrast of these two character types heightens the drama. In some cases, however, these opposing traits are not clear-cut.
The application of the femme forte can be equally effective with two – or in this case, three – female protagonists, one of “whose strength of character is directed towards realising personal ambition rather than upholding Christian morality.” 53 Die Frau ohne Schatten features three women, each with an agenda. Each could be said to pursue her own personal ambition, but the Empress and Barak’s wife are conflicted about the means to achieve their goals, whereas Die Amme is not bothered by collateral damage in what she stands to gain from her involvement. None of the women is clearly good or clearly bad – even Die Amme has her brief moments approaching grace. But while the Empress admits that she is to blame for the unraveling of the Baraks’ marriage and seeks to undo the damage, Die Amme shows no remorse for her part in the affair and in fact prolongs the couple’s agony as they search for the way back to each other.
Schultz views both the Empress and Barak’s wife as Faustian figures, with the Empress selling her soul to obtain a shadow and Barak’s wife selling hers to be rid of her shadow; the Mephistophelean Die Amme serves as the agent to grant each woman her desire. 54 Both the Empress and Barak’s wife feel stifled and ultimately seek more emotional fulfillment in their lives, but each steps back when, at the brink of making an irreversible decision harmful to another, she lets her moral conscience guide her actions. Like Faust, they have a change of heart. The nurse, however, is incapable of taking the “long view,” and in that regard, as Schwarz observes, she will not change.
Just as a vampire’s bite can turn its victim into a vampire, Albright explains, “Verdi’s witches exert a field of force that turns others into witches,” notably Lady Macbeth, whom they assimilate into their own coven. 55 At the critical moment, Die Amme does not have that force field with either the Empress or Barak’s wife, and neither woman falls completely under the nurse’s spell. Mann describes the Nurse as “naturally malevolent although not maleficently powerful.” 56
Is Die Amme simply a nasty, self-centered old woman so intent on returning to the spirit world and so oblivious to the emerging situation that she has erred and strayed from a more admirable path once followed as nurse to Keikobad’s young fairy child? It is tempting to give Die Amme the benefit of the doubt, to interpret her witchiness as misguided rather than confirmed, to offer her constant watchful anxiety when guarding her charge and her tender behavior toward the Empress who has fallen prostrate on the ground after refusing the shadow as ameliorating factors. Had her expressed readiness to die for the Empress to save her from Keikobad’s retribution once back in the spirit world been the nurse’s last words, she perhaps could have been forgiven her previous diabolical behavior. But instead of reaching out to others when the situation was at its most dire – as did the Empress and Barak’s wife and Faust before them – Die Amme, like Mephistopheles, curses them. Like Lady Macbeth, whom Verdi’s witches assimilate as one of their own, Die Amme is “lost in her own labyrinth,” unable – or unwilling – to find her way out of the wicked course her life has taken. 57 Even her music cannot save her.
Die Amme is at her most lyrical when singing to the Twelfth Messenger at the beginning of the opera about the Empress’s lack of a shadow – the very condition that will necessitate a return to the spirit world or, in the worst-case scenario, more unpleasant mingling among humans. The nurse’s lengthy solo, when arguing with the Empress about the source of a shadow, beginning “Day is breaking, a human day. Do you scent it? Does it make you shiver?” reveals her scorn for humanity, tainting the mission before it even has begun. 58
That scorn is never far beneath the surface in the next scene as Die Amme attempts to sweet-talk Barak’s wife into a contract regarding the shadow. Feigning admiration, the nurse flatters the wife with a pronouncement that brings to mind the biblical Gabriel’s salutation to Mary – “Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1: 28 KJV). Die Amme’s insincere “Oh, you sovereign, you who are glorified among women, now shall you see it and experience it” is more curse than blessing, however. And Die Amme’s big scene toward the end of the opera, which could have redeemed her when forced to confront her duplicitous behavior, only reinforces her evil character.
Notes
- Max F. Schultz, “Die Frau ohne Schatten: A Feminist Faust,” Ars Lyrica 6 (1992): 41.
- Schultz, “Die Frau ohne Schatten.”
- Daniel Albright, Abstract for “The Witches and the Witch: Verdi’s Macbeth,” Cambridge Opera Journal 17 (3) (2005):
- Thomas A. Kovach, “Die Frau ohne Schatten: Hofmannsthal’s Response to the Symbolist Dilemma,” German Quarterly 57 (1984): 385.
- Kovach, “Die Frau ohne Schatten,”
- Sherrill H. Pantle, Die Frau ohne Schatten by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss: An Analysis of Text, Music, and Their Relationship (Bern: Lang, 1978), 54–67, 83–86.
- Pantle, Die Frau ohne Schatten, 2, 39.
- Working Friendship, 203.
- A Working Friendship, 205–206.
- A Working Friendship, 206.
- Hofmannsthal, Woman Without a Shadow, trans. Hollander, 24.
- Harvey E. Phillips, “Head Nurse,” Opera News 66 (7) (January 2002): 26. Till Eulenspiegel is a prankster of German folklore brought to musical life in Richard Strauss’s late-nineteenth-century tone poem Till Eulenspiegel’s lustige Streiche.
- Strauss, Die Frau ohne Schatten, cond. Solti (Decca DVD). See also E. Humperdinck, Hänsel und Gretel, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, cond. Jeffrey Tate (EMI Classics CD, 2005).
- Sarah Colvin, “The Classical Witch and the Christian Martyr: Two Ideas of Woman in Hamburg Baroque Opera Libretti,” German Life and Letters s. 46 (3) (July 1993): 193.
- Colvin, “The Classical Witch and the Christian Martyr,” 198.
- Schultz, “Die Frau ohne Schatten,” 41–42.
- Albright, “The Witches and the Witch,” 226, 239.
- Mann, Richard Strauss, 175.
- Albright, “The Witches and the Witch,” 251.
- Mann, Richard Strauss, 178.
A comprehensive list of the hundred-plus operas that include a nurse character is found on my website under BOOKS > The Nurse in History and Opera > Book Extras.
To learn more about how the nurse is portrayed on the opera stage, see Judith Barger, The Nurse in History and Opera: From Servant to Sister (Lexington Books, 2024).
