Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Born in Munich, Germany, Richard Strauss grew up in a musical atmosphere. Though he showed talent early and was considered a 'wunderkind' or prodigy, his youthful compositions reflect the trends of romanticism and give little indication of the originality to come. When he was seventeen, his first symphony was performed; he was only twenty when his second had its premiere. A brief apprenticeship under Hans von Bülow seems to have introduced him to the ideals of Wagner, whom Strauss' father considered a fraud. After a trip to Italy, Strauss joined the conducting staff at the Munich Hoftheatre in 1886 and wrote his first important tone poems, influenced by the aesthetics of Wagner and Liszt. These works, with their literary programs and dramatic depiction of events, led him toward the theatre, and he wrote his first opera, Guntram, in 1894. Neither it nor Feuersnot (1901) matched his symphonic works in success, but by the turn of the century Strauss had reached the end of his tone-poem period and was ready to devote himself more and more to the stage.

It was with Salome (1905), a setting of Oscar Wilde's play, that Strauss emerged as an apostle of decadence and modernism. The work was banned after one performance at the Met in 1907, and when Strauss followed it with Elektra (1909) the critics swore he had achieved the impossible-a work even noisier, more violent, and more depraved than Salome. The presence of Freudian psychology in these operas, combined with their brevity and musical impact, make them not only shocking but timely, and they exerted a broad influence. Strauss showed no further interest in this genre, however, and went on to a romantic period comedy, his most popular opera, Der Rosenkavalier (1911), which offended some with its racy sexuality but placated most with its sugary waltzes.

In Elektra, Strauss began his long collaboration with the poet-dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Whereas Elektra was an adaptation from Sophocles, Der Rosenkavalier was all original Hofmannsthal, as was Ariadne auf Naxos (1912). With Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), both librettist and composer overreached their sense of proportion, but the public loved the gigantic, symbol-fraught work. It was Strauss' last major stage success. Arabella (1933), their final collaboration, was accused of being too similar to Rosenkavalier, but it proved to be more than a backward look: in the context of rising Nazism, Strauss' ironic nostalgia had something to say about the vanishing past of the German-speaking world.

Strauss continued to write operas during World War II. The final one, Capriccio was meant to appeal only to the connoisseur, which it does with great success. Clemens Krauss' brilliant libretto, made to order for the composer's talents and concerns, explores the relationship of the artist with his art. As a retrospective on Strauss' life work, Capriccio shows him drawn back more and more not only into the preceding century (whose ideals had nurtured him) but to the age of Mozart, whose operas he had championed as a conductor in Berlin and Vienna. Though Strauss wrote other valedictories, notably his Metamorphosen for strings and Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra, Capriccio was his farewell to the stage, not by coincidence but by intent.

Courtesy of: John W. Freeman. The Metropolitan Opera: Stories of the Great Operas. New York: The Metropolitan Opera Guild, W.W. Norton & Company, 1984.