In 1959, the musicologist Willi Schuh published Richard Strauss’s scenario and fragmentary musical sketches for Die Insel Kythere (The Isle of Cythera).¹ The inspiration for this unfinished ballet occurred during the composer’s trip in early 1900 to Paris to conduct two concerts. While in the French capital, Strauss also visited its cultural landmarks, including the Louvre, where he took interest in the French rococo, especially canvases by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721).² As he had done for his only complete opera to date, Guntram (1894), Strauss himself drafted the three-act libretto to Die Insel Kythere, which remains obscure despite its posthumous...

With premieres in Paris and London by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the ballet-pantomime Josephslegende (or La Légende de Joseph)¹ was poised to follow in the footsteps of a series of revolutionary performances choreographed by Michel Fokine. The debut of Josephslegende on May 14, 1914 in Paris was framed on the program by the Ballets Russes premiere of Fokine’s Papillons (originally premiered in St. Petersburg in 1912 with Schumann’s Op. 2 orchestrated by Nicholas Tcherepnine), as well as a revival of Fokine’s wildly popular Schéhérazade, which had debuted in Paris in 1910 during the second saison russe. Behind Josephslegende stood a...

Anyone who sets out to write about Richard Strauss during the interwar period has some explaining to do. The 1920s have come to represent the composer’s personal and professional nadir—at least up to that point—one plagued with emotional despondency in the wake of World War I, financial insecurity, and, in the words of Michael Kennedy, a “growing awareness that he and his music were becoming almost grotesquely out of tune with the times.”¹ Crudely glossing on Adorno, whose first critical essay devoted solely to Strauss was published in 1924, one wonders if the composer himself had become aware...

As discussed in chapter 3, Strauss had been stirred by the Ballets Russes since the time of Josephslegende (1914) and set out to emulate Diaghilev’s enterprise while serving as codirector of the Vienna Staatsoper from 1919 to 1924. Hoping to revamp the Vienna Opera Ballet, the composer recruited the dancer-choreographer Heinrich Kröller to the Austrian capital. There, Kröller brought a number of dance productions to the stage, including Josephslegende (1922), Carnaval (1922), Don Juan (1924), and Die Ruinen von Athen (1924), all of which involved Strauss on some level (see the introduction to chapter 3). Riding the wave of the...

“Truly a celebration for the eyes.” “A dance-conjuration in the spirit of the baroque.” “Sending shivers up the spine.” “One feels strangely moved, indeed shaken.”¹ The impressions of four eyewitnesses, this euphoric litany was inspired by Verklungene Feste: Tanzvisionen aus Zwei Jahrhunderten, which had its premiere at Munich’s Nationaltheater on April 5, 1941. Choreographed by Pia and Pino Mlakar,² Verklungene Feste was comprised of reconstructions of baroque dances from Raoul Auger Feuillet’s monumental Choréographie ou l’art de décrire la danse par caractères, figures et signes démonstratifs (Orchesography or the art of dancing, by characters and demonstrative figures, 1700). The Mlakars...