Bryan Gilliam explores the composer's response to Wagner in his discussion of Strauss' stage works and their historical contexts.

Bryan Gilliam is a Bass Professor in Humanities at Duke University, North Carolina. He is the author of Richard Strauss's Elektra (1996) and The Life of Richard Strauss (Cambridge, 1999), and editor of a number of books, including Music and Performance during the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 1994) and Music, Image, Gesture (2005). His numerous book chapters and articles include the biographical entry on Richard Strauss in The Revised New Grove Dictionary of Music. He serves on the Strauss editorial board in Munich and has given lectures in the US, Austria, Germany, and the UK.

Preface; Introduction; A musical-analytical postscript; 1. Guntram and the crisis of German musical metaphysics; 2. Élan vital: Feuersnot, Salome, and radical individualism; 3. The way to the social: Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier; 4. Intermezzo: Ariadne and her transformations; 5. The marriage operas: Die Frau ohne Schatten, Intermezzo, and Die ägyptische Helena; 6. Composing without Hofmannsthal: Arabella and Die schweigsame Frau; 7. The politics of peace: Friedenstag and Daphne; 8. Opera in time of war: Die Liebe der Danae and Capriccio.