REFERENCE: OPERA - Richard Strauss (1864 –1949)

In the same way that Bach marked both the pinnacle and the end of the Baroque Era, Richard Strauss was the last of the great Romantics. Like his contemporary Gustav Mahler he both followed and greatly extended the type of musical expression founded by composers such as Richard Wagner where highly charged music was performed by enormous orchestras. He was very much a celebrity at the peak of his career as both composer and conductor and, though he faded from the limelight as younger composers explored new territories, he remained an inspiration to a new generation of musicians.

Around the end of the 19th century, Strauss turned his attention to opera. His first two attempts in the genre, Guntram in 1894 and Feuersnot in 1901 were critical failures. However, in 1905 he produced Salome (based on the play by Oscar Wilde), and the reaction was as passionate and extreme as it had been with Don Juan. When it opened at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, there was such a public outcry that it was closed after just one performance.
Doubtless, much of this was due to the subject matter, however some of the negative reactions may have stemmed from Strauss's use of dissonance, rarely heard then at the opera house. Elsewhere the opera was highly successful and Richard Strauss financed his house in Garmisch-Partenkirchen completely from the revenues generated by the opera.
Strauss' next opera was Elektra, which took his use of dissonance even further. It was also the first opera in which Strauss collaborated with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The two would work together on numerous other occasions. For these later works, however, Strauss moderated his harmonic language somewhat, with the result that works such as Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose, 1910) were great public successes. Strauss continued to produce operas at regular intervals until 1940. These included Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1918), Intermezzo (1923), Die ägyptische Helena (1927), and Arabella (1932), all in collaboration with Hofmannsthal; and Die schweigsame Frau (1934), with Stefan Zweig as librettist; Friedenstag (1936) and Daphne (1937) (libretto by Joseph Gregor and Zweig); Die Liebe der Danae (1940) (with Gregor) and Capriccio (libretto by Clemens Krauss) (1941).