Richard Strauss enjoyed early success as both conductor and composer, in the second capacity influenced by the work of Wagner. He developed the symphonic poem (or tone poem) to an unrivalled level of expressiveness and after 1900 achieved great success with a series of impressive operas, at first on a grand scale but later tending to a more Classical restraint. His relationship with the National Socialist government in Germany was at times ambiguous, a fact that protected him but led to post-war difficulties and self-imposed exile in Switzerland, from which he returned home to Bavaria only in the year of his death, 1949.

Operas

Richard Strauss created an immediate sensation with his opera Salome, based on the play of that na...