Die Frau ohne Schatten

Die Frau ohne Schatten
Opera by Richard Strauss
Costume design by Alfred Roller for the premiere, for the part of the Nurse
Translation	The Woman without a Shadow
Librettist	Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Language	German
Based on	“The Conversation of German Emigrants” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Premiere	10 October 1919 (1919-10-10) Vienna State Opera

Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow), Op. 65, is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss with a libretto by his long-time collaborator, the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was written between 1911 and either 1915 or 1917. When it premiered in Vienna on 10 October 1919, critics and audiences were unenthusiastic. Many cited problems with Hofmannsthal's complicated and heavily symbolic libretto. However, it is now a standard part of the operatic repertoire.

Work on the opera began in 1911. Hofmannsthal’s earliest sketches for the libretto are based on a piece by Goethe, "The Conversation of German Emigrants" (1795). Hofmannsthal handles Goethe's material freely, adding the idea of two couples, the emperor and empress who come from another realm, and the dyer and his wife who belong to the ordinary world. Hofmannsthal also drew on portions of the Arabian Nights, Grimms' Fairy Tales, and even quotes Goethe's Faust. The opera is conceived as a fairy-tale on the theme of love blessed through the birth of children. Hofmannsthal, in his letters, compared it with Mozart's Magic Flute, which has a similar arrangement of two couples.

Strauss began composing immediately. He and Hofmannsthal worked on music and words in parallel, each receiving inspiration from the other. Strauss was happy with Hofmannsthal’s text, but asked him to rewrite many passages for the sake of dramatic effect. Hofmannsthal was adamantly opposed and was more worried about the symbolism beneath his libretto. The opera was finished in 1915, during the First World War, but had to wait for its premiere until 1919. The sometimes difficult genesis of the opera is documented in their correspondence.

Strauss himself called this opera his “child of woe”, he even called it "Die Frosch" ("Frosch" means "frog" in German), that is "Die Frau ohne Schatten"). The complexity of the text and the stress of wartime made its composition a laborious task, and Strauss was also disappointed with the first productions.