One of the subtopics of my research is titled like “Searching for Innocence in the Midst of (Immoral) Masquerade”. Originally it had to deal only with the characters of „innocent girls”. This kind of character is for example Sophie in „Der Rosenkavalier”: in order to save her from the arranged marriage (which would be a masquerade by itself) Octavian stages even a greater masquerade… Then, it is surely Arabella in the eponymous opera. A great deal of the plot is dedicated to the misunderstandings around the issue of her chastity; but in order to prove her “innocence”, one has to expose the masquerade her whole milieu is engaged in (the bankrupt family had to bluff in order to marry her off and for the sake of this purpose her younger sister was dressed as a boy because this was less expensive…)

Initially, „The Legend of Joseph” was not included in this context. But it turned out that precisely in this work Hofmannsthal went to the utmost extremities in his elaboration of the „discourse of purity”. This ballet libretto, however, is a sort of changeling of his other works which feature „an image of innocence” (or vice versa?). Unlike in other relevant cases, in “The Legend of Joseph” a similar image is not associated with a girl who is distanced from any impure games, any impure bargains (which she might be anyway involved into as a commodity, as it is the case both in „Der Rosenkavalier” and „Arabella”).

After the success of Hofmannsthal’s Elektra directed by Max Reinhardt with Gertrud Eysoldt in the lead (Berlin, 1903), the play draws attention both of outstanding directors and outstanding actresses of the period. Thus, for example, Edward Gordon Craig negotiates with Eleonora Duse (with the mediation of Harry Kessler)… Craig, quite naturally, thinks that Reinhardt misunderstood the pathos of the play; his own sketches (now in the collection of the French National Library) show that he was going to return this Greek story into the realm of the sublime and ideal. These sketches quote purified architectonic forms and quite traditional scenes of the ritual sacrifices…

At the same time the play interests the reformer of the French theatre Aurélien Lugné-Poe. The director who (together with his wife Suzanne Desprès) is equally in contact with Duse (because of the Ibsen productions), in turn, thinks about Elektra as about a play precisely for Desprès. And it is possible, that he is somehow inspired just by the Berlin production.

Hilda Burger, the editor of the correspondence between Kessler and Hofmannsthal provides astonishing information: in 1909 Suzanne Desprès made a successful tour with this play in Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, Istanbul, Jassy, Stuttgart, Munich, Buenos Aires etc. Why has the memory of this production so completely disappeared from the history of theatre?