Gustav Mahler was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Richard Georg Strauss was a German composer and conductor best known for his tone poems and operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor, pianist and composer. Born in Berlin, he escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, was naturalised as a French citizen in 1938, and settled in the United States in 1939. He worked closely with Gustav Mahler, whose music he helped to establish in the repertory, held major positions with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Deutsche Oper Berlin, among others, made recordings of historical and artistic significance, and is widely considered to be one of the great conductors of the 20th century.
The Semperoper is the opera house of the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden and the concert hall of the Staatskapelle Dresden. It is also home to the Semperoper Ballett. The building is located on the Theaterplatz near the Elbe River in the historic centre of Dresden, Germany.
Stephen Grady Gould was an American heldentenor and leading interpreter of Richard Wagner's stage works. He performed around 100 times at the Bayreuth Festival, notably as Tannhäuser starting in 2004, and later Siegfried and Tristan. In 2022, his performance in all three roles earned him nicknames such as Iron Man.
Maria Cebotari was a Bessarabian-Romanian lyric coloratura soprano. She was widely known as a singer by the mid 1930s and noted in particular for her wide range of repertoire.
Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) is a ballet written by Johann Strauss II. He had written all the principal parts of the ballet, and was intending to fill in the orchestration as time permitted. However, Strauss died in 1899, and it was finished by composer Josef Bayer in 1900.
Die schweigsame Frau, Op. 80, is a 1935 comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a libretto by Stefan Zweig after Ben Jonson's 1609 comedy Epicœne, or The Silent Woman.
Marie Gutheil-Schoder was an important German soprano.
Jonas Alber is a German conductor and violinist based in Berlin. He was appointed general music director of the Staatstheater Braunschweig in 1998, becoming Germany’s youngest conductor to hold such a position at the time.
Rachel Willis-Sørensen is an American operatic soprano.
Stefan Anton Reck is a German orchestra conductor and painter. He was born on 26 April 1960 in Baden-Baden, Germany.
Marie Renard was an Austrian operatic mezzo-soprano, later soprano.
The orchestral Dance Suite from Keyboard Pieces by François Couperin, TrV 245 was composed by Richard Strauss in 1923 and consists of eight movements, each one based on a selection of pieces from François Couperin's Pièces de Clavecin written for the solo harpsichord over the period 1713 to 1730. It is also sometimes referred to as simply The Couperin Suite.
Taillefer, Op. 52, TrV 207, is a cantata for choir and orchestra composed by Richard Strauss in 1903. The text is a rendering of the medieval tale Taillefer by the German poet Ludwig Uhland (1787–1862). The piece was written to celebrate the centenary of Heidelberg University and was premiered on the same day that Strauss received his honorary doctorate from the university, on 26 October 1903 in the newly built Heidelberg Town Hall with Strauss conducting. It is written for a mixed chorus with three soloists, tenor (Taillefer), baritone, and soprano, with a large orchestra. The work was performed at the last night of The Proms in 2014.
Die Rose vom Liebesgarten is a 1900 opera by Hans Pfitzner to a libretto by James Grun, one of Pfitzner's fellow students at the Frankfurt Conservatory, which had been prompted by an 1890 painting by Hans Thoma Der Wächter vor dem Liebesgarten.
Simone Schneider is a German operatic soprano. As a member of Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, she performed coloratura roles such as the Mozart's Queen of the Night. As a member of the Staatsoper Stuttgart from 2006, she has performed a wide range of leading roles including Donizetti's Maria Stuarda and the Feldmarschallin in Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. She performed as a guest in major opera houses in Germany and Europe.
Anny Felbermayer was an Austrian soprano in opera and concert. The lyric soprano was a long-term member of the Vienna State Opera. She appeared in many operas by Richard Strauss, including the premiere of his Die Liebe der Danae at the Salzburg Festival in 1952.
Leopold Demuth (real name Leopold Pokorny was a Moravian operatic baritone. He was celebrated in particular for his successful performances in works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner.
Roman Sadnik is an Austrian operatic tenor.
