Word: feuersnot
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...born in Munich and lived there, or not far away, much of his life, but he feuded with the staid Münchners for rejecting his first (1893) opera, Guntram. The Munich Opera dropped it after only one disconsolate performance. Strauss's revenge: his very next opera, Feuersnot (1901), a go-minute twitting of Munich's conservative burghers. At the current Munich Festival, opera fans flocked to see their first Feuersnot in more than 20 years, heartily applauded the lampooning administered to them from across the footlights...
...only other Austrian of Mahler's musical stature was Richard Strauss. The Mahlers and Strausses shared a box at the opening of Strauss's opera, Feuersnot. Writes Alma Mahler: "Strauss thought of nothing but money ... the whole time he had a pencil in his hand. . . . [He] calculated his profits to the last penny." Strauss's formidable wife, Pauline, said to Mahler: "My God, for a million-well no, that's not enough-five million! And then Richard can stop manufacturing music...
Last week two premieres were announced for a double bill. Die Maien- konigen was the curtain-raiser, a pastoral meringue, mixed & baked, it is said, by no less a man than Gluck for the birthday palate of Maria Theresa. Then came Richard Strauss's Feuersnot...
...opera houses of Europe, Feuersnot is an old story. Strauss finished it in 1901 (it antedates Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, his three operas known in the U. S.) when the afterglow of the Mightier Richard still blinded the young composers of the day, sending tunes from Tristan and Siegfried watered and warped into a thousand insignificant attempts. But Strauss even then could stand alone. He quoted, to be sure, from Rheingold but he quoted deliberately, when it suited him to have Wagner pop out of the back-ground of his libretto as the great forerunner of himself?the great Strauss...
...last output in this form is his Alpine Symphony and the Wedding Prelude, written for his son Franz's nuptials early this year. The Baby of the Sinfonia has grown up. Strauss is almost as famous for his operas as for his tone-poems. These are Guntram (1894), Feuersnot (1901), Salome (1905) which raised a storm and had to be suppressed when it first came to the U. S. but which now pro vides Mary Garden with one of her favorite roles, Elektra (1909) at the first production of which the composer wanted real live bulls on the stage...