50 Fun Facts About Richard Strauss

Which 1968 science-fiction film made the opening fanfare of Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra world famous?

2001: A Space Odyssey kept the fanfare from Stanley Kubrick's temporary soundtrack. Alex North, whose commissioned score was dropped, only found out when he watched the premiere.

Richard Strauss was no relation to Vienna's Strauss dynasty, whose Johann II wrote which famous waltz?

The Blue Danube came from Johann Strauss II, Vienna's Waltz King and no relation. Richard still tipped his hat to that laughing genius of Vienna in the waltzes of Der Rosenkavalier.

Which rock and roll star took the stage to Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra fanfare throughout the 1970s?

Elvis Presley used the fanfare as his entrance music at live shows from 1971 to 1977. The wrestler Ric Flair later walked to the ring to it for most of a 50-year career.

Richard Strauss's mother, Josephine Pschorr, came from a Munich family that grew rich making which product?

Beer made the Pschorrs wealthy, and the name lives on in Hacker-Pschorr, one of the six Munich breweries that pour at Oktoberfest.

A Karajan recording of Richard Strauss's An Alpine Symphony was used for the first test pressing of which format?

Compact disc developers pressed their first trial disc from his December 1980 Berlin recording. Herbert von Karajan had been signed up as an ambassador for the new format the year before.

Which sporting event opened in 1936 with a hymn that Richard Strauss both composed and conducted?

Summer Olympics organisers in Berlin had him conduct the hymn himself, with a chorus of a thousand singers dressed in white, moments after thousands of white pigeons were released.

In Richard Strauss's opera Salome, whose severed head does the princess demand on a silver platter?

John the Baptist, called Jochanaan in the opera, has refused her a kiss. She takes it from the severed head in a final scene that shocked audiences at the 1905 premiere.

Which Irish writer's scandalous French-language play did Richard Strauss turn into his opera Salome?

Oscar Wilde wrote Salomé in French in 1891. Strauss set a German translation of it, trimming the text himself until almost half of the play was gone.

An American soldier who visited Richard Strauss in 1945 asked him to write a concerto for which instrument?

Oboe player John de Lancie, a corporal who led the section in Pittsburgh in civilian life, put the question and got a flat no. Strauss finished the concerto that autumn anyway.

Richard Strauss took the title Also sprach Zarathustra from a book by which German philosopher?

Friedrich Nietzsche published Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the 1880s. Strauss named the nine sections of his 1896 tone poem after chapters of the book.

What does the princess perform for King Herod in Richard Strauss's opera Salome?

Dance of the Seven Veils so alarmed Marie Wittich, the first Salome, that she refused to perform it. A dancer had to stand in for her at the 1905 premiere.

Richard Strauss's father, Franz, was for over 40 years the Munich court opera's principal player of which instrument?

Horn playing by Franz Strauss disarmed even a famous composer he openly disliked, who called him a detestable fellow but admitted nobody could sulk once he started to blow.

Richard Strauss's father played in the first Parsifal yet forbade his son to study which composer's music?

Wagner was viewed with deep suspicion in the Strauss home, and Richard was 16 before he got hold of a score of Tristan und Isolde. He later said he regretted the family hostility.

Which prankster of German folklore, hanged near the end, is the hero of an 1895 Richard Strauss tone poem?

Till Eulenspiegel goes to the gallows as a clarinet wails his last scream and plucked strings snap his neck. Then the once-upon-a-time opening returns, as if he could never be destroyed.

Which legendary seducer is the hero of the 1889 tone poem that made Richard Strauss famous at 25?

Don Juan ends quietly rather than in triumph. In the poem Strauss followed, the hero tires of the chase, drops his guard in a duel and lets his opponent run him through.

In Richard Strauss's Don Quixote, which solo instrument plays the part of the deluded knight himself?

Cello soloists carry the knight through a set of variations lasting about 45 minutes. A solo viola, tenor tuba and bass clarinet share the part of his squire, Sancho Panza.

In Richard Strauss's Don Quixote, flutter-tongued brass imitate which animals that the knight mistakes for an army?

Sheep bleat in the second variation through flutter-tonguing, one of the earliest uses of the brass effect. In the novel the knight charges the flock, sure it is an emperor's army.

In Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, the young count Octavian is a male role written for which voice?

Mezzo-soprano Octavian is a breeches role: a woman plays the 17-year-old lover, who then spends part of the opera disguised as a maid. All three leads are sung by women.

Which poet and playwright wrote the librettos of six Richard Strauss operas, among them Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier?

Hugo von Hofmannsthal began with Elektra and ended with Arabella, their sixth and last opera together. He died of a stroke while dressing for his elder son's funeral.

Richard Strauss lost his official Nazi-era post in 1935 after insisting which Jewish writer be credited as librettist?

Stefan Zweig wrote the comedy Die schweigsame Frau for him. The Gestapo intercepted a letter in which Strauss criticised the regime, and the opera was banned after three performances.

Which Nazi leader, privately called a pipsqueak by Richard Strauss, made him head of the Reich Music Chamber?

Joseph Goebbels made the appointment in 1933 without asking him first. In his own diary he called Strauss a decadent neurotic whom the regime still needed for the time being.

Richard Strauss's dealings with the Nazi regime were driven partly by the need to protect which Jewish family member?

His daughter-in-law Alice, who married his only son in 1924, and her two boys were in danger under Nazi race laws. His influence kept all three out of the concentration camps.

In 1940 Richard Strauss wrote festival music for the 2,600th anniversary of which country's imperial dynasty?

Japan commissioned pieces from composers of six nations for the celebration. Strauss scored his for 14 tuned temple gongs, while Benjamin Britten's offering was rejected as an insult.

Richard Strauss's 1924 ballet Schlagobers, set in a Viennese cake shop, is named after which sweet treat?

Whipped cream is Schlagobers in Viennese German. In the ballet a boy overindulges after his confirmation and hallucinates marching marzipan, amorous liqueurs and a riot of cakes.

After Der Rosenkavalier triumphed in Dresden in 1911, what was laid on from Berlin for eager opera-goers?

A special train carried Berliners to Dresden for the Richard Strauss hit. The craze spread further: a brand of cigarettes took the opera's name and costumed rose-bearers rode in a carnival parade.

Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier is set in 1740s Vienna, early in the reign of which empress?

Maria Theresa had only just come to the throne in the opera's Vienna, decades before the waltz arrived there. Strauss filled the score with waltzes anyway, for nostalgia rather than accuracy.

In which Bavarian Alpine resort did Richard Strauss build a villa with his Salome earnings and live until his death?

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is where American troops found him in April 1945. He came downstairs, introduced himself as the composer of Rosenkavalier, and an Off Limits sign went up on his lawn.

In which Austrian city did Richard Strauss help to found a festival in 1920 with the director Max Reinhardt?

Salzburg saw the festival's first opera in 1922, Mozart's Don Giovanni with Strauss conducting. The opening event two years earlier was a play staged on the cathedral steps.

Which card game did Richard Strauss love so much that he wrote a hand of it into one of his operas?

Skat, Germany's national card game, was a passion that lasted his whole life. In the opera, the hero is in mid-game when a telegram arrives from his furious wife.

Which conductor, won over by a wind serenade Richard Strauss wrote as a schoolboy, gave him his first conducting job?

Hans von Bülow was unimpressed at first, then made the young composer his assistant at Meiningen. Strauss learned by watching him rehearse and called him his greatest conducting mentor.

Which composer told the young Richard Strauss that his symphony had too much playing about with themes?

Johannes Brahms gave the verdict at Meiningen, where Strauss had helped rehearse the orchestra for the premiere of the older man's Fourth Symphony. Strauss later called those years his time of Brahms adoration.

Which composer and friend of Richard Strauss called Salome a live volcano, yet could not get it past Vienna's censor?

Gustav Mahler ran Vienna's opera house but was refused permission to stage the work, so the city waited until 1918 to hear it there. The two men had been friends since meeting in Leipzig in 1887.

Which conductor said he took off his hat to Richard Strauss the composer but put it back on for the man?

Arturo Toscanini made the remark in 1933, when Strauss accepted a Nazi music post. That year Strauss also took over at Bayreuth after the Italian had resigned in protest at the regime.

Which pianist, best known for playing Bach, called Richard Strauss the greatest musical figure of his century?

Glenn Gould made the claim in 1962 and backed it up to the end: his final recording, made weeks before his death in 1982, was the piano sonata Strauss wrote as a teenager.

Three of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs set poems by which novelist, who had won the Nobel Prize two years earlier?

Hermann Hesse's collected poems had just been given to Strauss, who set three of them for voice and orchestra. The title Four Last Songs came from his publisher after his death.

On his 1904 American tour, Richard Strauss conducted two concerts for a $1,000 fee in what kind of New York venue?

A department store, Wanamaker's, hosted both concerts in April 1904. They followed the success of his new Symphonia Domestica at Carnegie Hall a few weeks earlier.

Which famous company cancelled Richard Strauss's Salome after one night in 1907, under pressure from wealthy patrons?

Metropolitan Opera backers, among them the daughter of the financier J. P. Morgan, had the remaining performances cancelled. The New York house did not stage the opera again until 1934.

Richard Strauss's opera Elektra is based on a revenge tragedy by which ancient Greek playwright?

Sophocles wrote the Electra behind the libretto, in which a daughter waits years to see her murdered father Agamemnon avenged. The score's harshest dissonance is still called the Elektra chord.

Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos was first staged as the finale to a comedy by which French playwright?

Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme came first, then the opera, and the 1912 evening ran for over six hours. Strauss later replaced the play with a sung prologue.

Which final Richard Strauss opera has a countess torn between a poet and a composer, standing for words and music?

Capriccio never settles the argument: the Countess goes in to supper still undecided between her suitors. Strauss was 78 when it opened in Munich in the middle of the war.

Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen ends by quoting the funeral march from which Beethoven symphony?

The Eroica march arrives in the final bars with the words In Memoriam written beneath it. Strauss composed the piece for 23 solo strings in 1945, as Germany's opera houses lay in ruins.

Which Richard Strauss tone poem, often read as a self-portrait, quotes his own earlier works more than thirty times?

Ein Heldenleben, or A Hero's Life, casts his critics as carping woodwinds and his wife as a capricious solo violin. He admitted to finding himself no less interesting than Napoleon.

Which Richard Strauss opera, to his own libretto, replays a real marital row sparked by a letter sent to the wrong man?

Intermezzo puts Strauss and his wife Pauline on stage under other names. She knew nothing of the subject before the first night, and brushed off congratulations on such a present from her husband.

Die schweigsame Frau, Richard Strauss's 1935 comic opera, is based on a play by which rival of Shakespeare?

Ben Jonson's 1609 comedy Epicoene supplied the plot: a rich old man with an obsessive hatred of noise is tricked into marrying a supposedly silent bride.

Richard Strauss gave the singer Pauline de Ahna his four Opus 27 songs, including Morgen!, to mark which occasion?

Their wedding in 1894 came with four new songs as his present to the bride. She was famously outspoken and short-tempered, yet he went on writing for her voice for decades.

Which young conductor, who had organised Richard Strauss's 85th birthday concert, also led the music at his funeral?

Georg Solti later recalled the trio from Der Rosenkavalier at the service: each singer broke down in tears and dropped out, then recovered, and all three finished together.

Richard Strauss drove to which concentration camp in a failed plea to free an elderly Jewish relative?

Theresienstadt held Paula Neumann, a relative by marriage. His plea in person failed, and she and 25 other relatives were murdered in the camps.

In Richard Strauss's opera Daphne, the heroine who rejects the god Apollo is finally transformed into what?

A tree is the new form Zeus grants her at Apollo's request, after the god has killed her mortal suitor. The transformation closes the opera in shimmering, silvery string music.

Richard Strauss's Burleske for piano and orchestra opens, unusually, with a tune played on which instrument?

Timpani open and close the piece. The famous pianist it was written for called it unplayable nonsense and refused to learn it, so Eugen d'Albert gave the premiere in 1890.

Which Norwegian singer, chosen by Richard Strauss himself, gave the first performance of his Four Last Songs in 1950?

Kirsten Flagstad sang them at the Royal Albert Hall under Wilhelm Furtwängler, eight months after the composer died. Having her introduce the songs had been one of his last wishes.