Elektra also marked the beginning of Strauss's working relationship with the leading Austrian poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who would provide another five libretti for the composer.

In 1972, Edward Downes, formerly associated with London's Royal Opera House, became Musical Director, and his first new production was the Australian premiere of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne, followed closely by Prokofiev's War and Peace as the opening night performance of the Sydney Opera House, a short time before the building's official opening.

Rains made several audio recordings, narrating a few Bible stories for children on Capitol Records, and reciting Richard Strauss's setting for narrator and piano of Tennyson's poem Enoch Arden, with the piano solos played by Glenn Gould.

Strauss's output of works for solo instrument or instruments with orchestra was fairly extensive.

Many later performances of the opera were also successful, not only with the general public but also with Strauss's peers: Maurice Ravel said that Salome was " stupendous ", and Mahler described it as " a live volcano, a subterranean fire ".

Strauss's next opera was Elektra ( 1909 ), which took his use of dissonance even further, in particular with the Elektra chord.

Strauss's songs have always been popular with audiences and performers, and are generally considered – along with many of his other compositions – to be masterpieces of the first rank.

For reasons of expediency, however, he was initially drawn into cooperating with the early Nazi regime in the hope that Hitler — an ardent Wagnerian and music lover who had admired Strauss's work since viewing Salome in 1907 — would promote German art and culture.

Meanwhile, far from being an admirer of Strauss's work, Joseph Goebbels maintained expedient cordiality with Strauss only for a period.

The Four Last Songs, composed shortly before Strauss's death, deal poetically with the subject of dying.

It is also true that Strauss's tempos are generally swift, but this, too, contributes to the structural cohesion and in any event is fully in keeping with our modern outlook in which speed is a virtue and attention spans are defined more by MTV clips and news sound bites than by evenings at the opera and thousand page novels.

This was the premiere of Richard Strauss's Salome, with the pivotal part of John the Baptist assigned to a baritone.

For instance in the first movement of Richard Strauss's 2nd symphony in F minor, the recapitulation begins with the first subject group in tonic but modulates to the mediant A-flat major for the second subject group before modulating back to F minor for the coda.

A story is told in biographies of both men that Strauss's wife Adele approached Brahms with a customary request that he autograph her fan.

Strauss's music is now regularly performed at the annual Neujahrskonzert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, as a result of the efforts by Clemens Krauss who performed a special all-Strauss programme in 1929 with the Viennese orchestra.

This may also have been fueled by Strauss's rivalry with another of Vienna's popular waltz and march composers, Karl Michael Ziehrer.

* List of Strauss's stage works with date, theatre information and links

The leitmotif associated with Salome herself in Richard Strauss's opera Salome ( opera ) | Salome.

After his commentaries ( on Romans, the Gospel of John, the Sermon on the Mount and the Epistle to the Hebrews ) and several volumes of sermons, his best-known books are Stunden christlicher Andacht ( 1839 ; 8th ed., 1870 ), intended to take the place of J H D Zschokke's standard rationalistic work with the same title, and his reply to David Strauss's Life of Jesus ( Glaubwürdigkeit der evangelischen Geschichte, 1837 ).

Some scholars unfamiliar with common medieval hermeneutics ( most notably, Shadia Drury ) have found fault with Strauss's contention that pre-modern political philosophers upheld an " exoteric " or salutary teaching in the act of pointing to an " esoteric " or true teaching, which remained hidden to the non-philosophical reader.

Strauss's anti-historical thinking connects him and his followers with the French Jacobins, who also regarded tradition as incompatible with virtue and rationality.

His paternal great-grandfather was Jewish-a fact which the Nazis, who lionised Strauss's music, later tried to conceal.

The art of the German Lied attracted him also, notably Schubert's " Der Erlkönig " ( sung in English ), " Ave Maria ", " Who is Sylvia ", " Sei mir gegrüsst ", " Erstarrung ", " Wasserflut ", " Die Krähe " and " Ungeduld "; Schumann's " Die Beiden Grenadier ", " Frühlingsnacht "; Carl Loewe's " The Clock ", " Edward "; Brahms's " Die Mainacht ", " Botschaft ", " Ständchen ", " Der Tod das ist die Kühle Nacht ", " Blinde Kuh "; Richard Strauss's " Traum durch die Dämmerung " and Hugo Wolf's " Nun wandre Maria ", " Verschwiegene Liebe ".

Contrary to Strauss's criticism of Edmund Burke, the historical sense may in fact be indispensable to an adequate apprehension of universality.

Strauss's biography of Jesus set Gospel criticism on its modern course.

Strauss's arguments have been met with strong criticism from many in the anti-globalization movement.

Beiträge zur Beantwortung der gegenwärtigen Lebensfrage der Theologie ( 1838 ; 2nd ed., 1866 ) was a reply to Strauss's Life of Jesus, and his criticism resulted in Strauss making numerous concessions in later works.

The new influences from Ritter resulted in what is widely regarded as Strauss's first piece to show his mature personality, the tone poem Don Juan ( 1888 ), which displays a new kind of virtuosity in its bravura orchestral manner.

Strauss's final opera, Capriccio ( 1942 ), had a libretto by Clemens Krauss, although the genesis for it came from Stefan Zweig and Joseph Gregor.

Much of Strauss's motivation in his conduct during the Third Reich was, however, to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice and his Jewish grandchildren from persecution.

The metaphor " Indian Summer " is often used by journalists, biographers, and music critics to describe Strauss's late upsurge of genius from 1942 through the end of his life.

L. Macy ( accessed 19 August 2005 ), ( subscription access ) ( This article is very different from the one in the 1980 Grove ; in particular, the analysis of Strauss's behavior during the Nazi period is more detailed.

Some of Johann Strauss's most famous works include The Blue Danube, Kaiser-Walzer, Tales from the Vienna Woods, the Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka, and the Pizzicato Polka.

Although the work was based on the same Nietzsche work as Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, Delius distanced himself from the Strauss work, which he considered a complete failure.

His book, Über den Gegensatz des Protestantismus und das Catholicismus ( On the opposition of Protestantism and Catholicism, 1833 ), called forth a reply from Baur, and he was one of those who attacked David Strauss's Life of Jesus.

Some of Strauss's students ( most notably Mansfield and Benardete ) have read their teacher as interested in a philosophical " esotericism " aimed primarily at protecting politics from philosophy – the reasoning of which might negatively affect opinions undergirding the political order.

After an exegesis of the very limited practical political views to be gleaned from Strauss's writings, Tarcov concludes that " Strauss can remind us of the permanent problems, but we have only ourselves to blame for our faulty solutions to the problems of today.

He commented negatively on a radio broadcast of December 30, 1934, but then heard Strauss's Der Fledermaus in a live broadcast from the Vienna State Opera and declared it a " most brilliant performance.

* Strauss's Great Waltz ( aka Waltzes from Vienna ) ( 1933 )

The film also features the famous Habanera from the opera Carmen and the opening from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, the latter of which plays over the deathbed of Earl Partridge and introduces his son Frank Mackey on stage.

In a more general sense, the term " piano concerto " could extend to the numerous often programmatic concerted works for piano and orchestra from the era – Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, Liszt's Totentanz and Ruins of Athens Variations, and Richard Strauss's Burleske are only a few of the hundreds of such works.

Such performances include a specialty of his, Leopold Godowsky's " Concert Paraphrase on Themes from Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus ", which he studied with Godowsky during his student years.

Richard Strauss's opera Die Schweigsame Frau was banned from 1935 – 1945 because the librettist, Stefan Zweig, was a Jew.

The response from music critics was overall very positive, although some responded negatively to Strauss's use of waltzes, a music form out of fashion at that present moment.

The themes of " Die Bajadere " were drawn from the score of Strauss's first operetta, Indigo und die Vierzig Räuber (" Indigo and the Forty Thieves "), loosely based on the Arabian Nights, which premiered in 1871 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.

Then Hugo von Hoffmansthal, the textwriter of this second " successful " production, seems to have taken the right decision, in restraining Strauss from getting even bolder: Strauss's success was guaranteed without any further scandal, so Hoffmansthal wrote a bittersweet scenario with a theme of resigning to the fact of getting older, for Strauss's next ( and after all most successful ) opera.

Although the press at that time praised Strauss's music, they criticized the libretto as banal and silly ; for instance, references were made to roast beef made from the sole of a boot and, where the waltz scene was played, the character of Duke Urbino was singing to passages of " meows " in tune with the waltz song which was met with much embarrassment from the Berlin audience.