Richard Strauss

Lore & Background

Strauss was born on 11 June 1864 in Munich, the son of Josephine and Franz Strauss, who was the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich. A child prodigy, he began musical studies at age four. His first tone poem to achieve wide acclaim was Don Juan. His first opera to achieve international fame was Salome.

He co-founded the Salzburg Festival in 1920. In 1933 he was appointed head of the Reichsmusikkammer and principal conductor of the Bayreuth Festival. He was fired from both positions in 1935 after insisting on using Jewish librettist Stefan Zweig for his opera Die schweigsame Frau. In 1948 he was cleared of wrongdoing by a denazification tribunal.

Reader's Guide

Strauss began his conducting career as assistant to Hans von Bülow with the Meiningen Court Orchestra in 1883. He served as principal conductor of the Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar from 1889 to 1894.

He made his conducting debut at the Bayreuth Festival in 1894. He later became principal conductor of the Berlin State Opera and then the Vienna State Opera. His works include tone poems such as Also sprach Zarathustra and Ein Heldenleben, operas such as Der Rosenkavalier and Capriccio, and other works like the Four Last Songs and Metamorphosen.

Did You Know?

• Strauss's father taught him the music of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert.
• Strauss attended the Bayreuth Festival in 1882 to hear his father perform in the world premiere of Wagner's Parsifal.
• His daughter-in-law was Jewish, and much of his apparent acquiescence to the Nazi Party was done to save her life and the lives of her children.
• Strauss's opera Friedenstag was a thinly veiled criticism of the Nazi Party.