Die Liebe der Danae. Heitere Mythologie in drei Akten von Joseph Gregor. Musik von Richard Strauss. Op. 83. Kavierauszug mit Text von Ernst Gernot Klusmann. - SIGNED BY STRAUSS AND KRAUSS ON THE DAY OF THE FIRST PERFORMANCE

Adolph FürstnerBerlin-Grunewald: Johannes Oertel. 1944. First Edition. Folio, signed by Strauss in blue ink, top right corner of the cast page, and by the Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss, who has added the date of 16. VIII.1944, being the date of the first and only performance of the work before Strauss's death, done as a single public rehearsal by Krauss as permitted by the Nazi's following the July 20th plot to assasinate Hitler. In the publisher's red binding. 10.5 x 13.25 inches, 336 pp. [PN] 8403. Trenner 278. Toned, else very fine throughout.


Die Liebe der Danae (The Love of Danae) is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a February 1937 German libretto by Joseph Gregor. Strauss worked on the score in 1937, 1938 and into 1939, although he was pre-occupied with completing Daphne, developing ideas with Gregor and finally replacing him as librettist for Capriccio, and then succumbed to illness, which caused postponement for several months into 1940. The opera was finally finished on 28 June 1940.


The composer initially refused to allow Clemens Krauss, to whom he had guaranteed the right to conduct the first performances, to stage it until two years after the war. But it appears that Strauss had granted to Clemens Krauss as early as November 1942 permission to perform the opera as part of the Salzburg Festival and in a letter to the composer, Krauss states that "I shall then bring the work to its first performance in celebration of your 80th birthday" which would take place on 11 June 1944. As it turned out, arrangements were made for mid-August performances in 1944, but, following the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler, Joseph Goebbels declared "total war" and closed all theatres within the Third Reich, resulting in the work not being allowed a public staging. The Nazis did however permit a single dress rehearsal in Salzburg, conducted by Clemens Krauss on 16 August in order that Strauss and an invited audience could hear the work performed. It was on this occasion that the present copy was signed by both the conductor and the composer. The opera was not performed again until the first official public performance, also under Krauss, at the Salzburg Festival on 14 August 1952, after Strauss' death in 1949. (12618)

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Signed Document/Item

Opera

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