«Daphne» o della trasformazione: l’eredità filosofica greco-germanica di Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) composed his opera Daphne (1938), a bucolic tragedy, on a libretto by Joseph Gregor (1888-1960). This score – culminating in Daphnes Transformation – is the perfect exempli ication of the philo- sophical convictions of the Bavarian composer. “Verwandlung” is the key-word around which Strauss makes a syn- thesis between the Greek and the German tradition: the ontic coessentiality of [a] wonder because things are and [b] wonder because things can also be differently from how they are. In front of the abyss of Nazism Daphne is an artistic last-call to Germanophone culture. A last-call that perdures also after the catastrophic outcome of Second World War, when 1949 Strauss, a few months before his death, plays an excerpt of Daphnes Transformations on his piano in front of journalists and cameras of all over the world rushed for his 85th birthday.