Strauss’s Wagner Parody

Just in time to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Richard Strauss’s birth, we are releasing a concert performance of his rarely performed »sung poem« Feuersnot under Ulf Schirmer. Richard Strauss pulled off a finely crafted and ironic look at his native Munich in his second opera, composed by him in Berlin and premiered in Dresden in 1901. The satirist Ernst von Wolzogen, who wrote the libretto for this »Bavarian burlesque,« founded the first literary cabaret in Berlin, the Überbrettl, a satiric allusion to Nietzsche’s Übermensch. And in a certain way Strauss’s music is also satirical: it may very much be termed a Wagner parody, a farewell to every sort of pomp and pathos. The plot may be summarized as follows: Kunrad, an eccentric withdrawn from the world and versed in magical powers, is forced to endure malicious ridicule and therefore has all the lights around him extinguished. It is first the love of the mayor’s daughter Diemut that remedies this Feuersnot (Fiery Need). Munich’s philistines set their hopes on swift deliverance. This much I can tell you: their wish is fulfilled.