Richard Strauss Posters & Art Prints
for the music, arts and social studies classrooms, and decor for office or home.

Richard Strauss wrote a tone poem, “Merry Pranks” of Till Eulenspiegel, based on the adventures of this trickster/fool character from German folklore.

Richard Strauss Woche (Richard Strauss Week, Munich, 1910)

Ariadne Auf Naxos, an opera in two parts called the Prologue and the Opera, was originally conceived as a “thirty-minute divertissement performed at the end of a Hugo Von Hofmannsthal adaptation of Molière's five act comedie-ballet-play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme”.

In Greek myth Ariadne is the daughter of King Minos of Crete, helped Theseus over throw the Minotaur (her brother), and bride of the god Dionysus.

In the opera Ariadne is abandoned on an island by Theseus and rescued by the god Bacchus (the Roman named for the Greek Dionysus), all with a group of comic performers lead by singer Zerbinetta telling Ariadne to get over Theseus and go with the love of Bacchus.

Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose) is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

The Knight of the Rose is the one who delivers a silver rose to a woman in behalf of friend who wants to court the lady - in this case the lady and the knight fall for one another and hilarity ensues.

Richard Strauss used author Oscar Wilde's play Salome as inspiration for his 1905 opera of the same name.

FYI ~
• Strauss considered Finnish soprano Aino Ackté the “one and only Salome”.
• The opera Herodiade (1881) based on a novella by Gustave Flaubert, inspired a less violent retelling of the John the Baptist story by composer Jules Massenet.