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• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1874–1929, Austrian Hofmannsthal was a precocious talent. His first published poem appeared when he was just 16 and he rapidly made the acquaintance of some of the leading literary figures of the day. Most important was a paternalistic relationship with the German poet Stefan George (1868–1933). Hofmannsthal’s youthful ability led to a creative crisis in his mid-twenties from which he ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

not have been the out-and-out modernist many have wanted him to be, but neither was he one to sit back and reproduce carbon copies of past successes. Strauss and Hofmannsthal decided to follow up Der Rosenkavalier with an altogether different proposition. Ariadne auf Naxos, in its original version, is a curious amalgam of play and opera. Its conception ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Strauss’s final opera marked a belated return to form. He had suffered since the end of his collaboration with Hofmannsthal and jettisoned his original librettist, Joseph Gregor, in favour of the conductor Clemens Krauss. The conception was a simple but subtle one in which the characters in the piece decide to write an opera. Only at the end is ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

as much as for its symphonic sweep. Even this work was not without its problems in rehearsal. Showing Octavian and the Marschallin in bed was thought to be obscene and Hofmannsthal was forced come up with alternatives. What seemed to cause no problems was the now-famous musical orgasm that opens the work before revealing Octavian and the Marschallin luxuriating in each ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

belonged to a bygone age and did not possess the tools or temperament to write music relevant to the time. Composed: 1914–17 Premiered: 1919, Vienna Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal Background Keikobad, ruler of the spirit world, gave his daughter a talisman to transform herself into an animal. Hunted by the emperor’s falcon, she changed from a ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

, and Strauss felt strongly that he needed to tackle an entirely different subject – by preference a light, comic work. He had been in correspondence with the playwright Hofmannsthal and approached him with an idea for such a work. Hofmannsthal had other ideas, and was insistent that Strauss should take up his adaptation of Sophocles’ play Electra. Like ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

avant-garde composer of his day. But it also marked a turn of creative events in his life that will always divide opinion. With the librettist of Elektra, Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929), Strauss embarked on a series of operas on more beguiling themes. Their second, and possibly greatest, success was Der Rosenkavalier (‘The Knight of the Rose’), with its ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

he had developed in his tone-poems. For his next opera he again chose a short play as his basis, this time by the great Austrian playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Hofmannsthal Hofmannsthal had written to Strauss in 1900 suggesting a scenario for a ballet, which had been rejected. Strauss, though, did not forget their correspondence and they began ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

a number of successful revivals. Introduction | Turn of the Century | Opera Major Operas | Andrea Chénier by Umberto Giordano | Turn of the Century Personalities | Hugo von Hofmannsthal | Turn of the Century | Opera ...

• Opera
• Turn of the Century

colleagues, quickly latched on to these theories. His work was instrumental in establishing one of the most vital partnerships in opera: that of Richard Strauss (1864–1949) and Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929). Appia’s ideas also influenced the Austrian designer Alfred Roller who, with Max Reinhardt as director, had worked on the premiere of Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier (‘The Knight ...