Even though his father Franz had played horn in the premieres in several of Wagner’s operas, the old man was not a fan of Herr Richard’s music dramas. His son, the composer Richard Strauss, would hold a similar position until his late teens when he discovered the piano score for Tristan and Isolde and he would prove a master of the orchestral tone poem and lieder before writing his first opera – the Wagnerian pastiche, Guntram – around his 30th birthday. However it was not until his third work in the field – Salome (1905), after Oscar Wilde’s notorious play – that he would have a major success de scandale with many productions being rapidly presented across Europe. 

With this and his take on the classical tale of Elektra a few years later, Strauss would electrify audiences while balancing precariously on the edge of tonality. However he would suddenly pull back to celebrate his other major influence, Mozart, and with the likes of Ariadne auf Naxos and particularly Der Rosenkavalier, he would create the much loved dramas wherein his unique ability to write for the female voice would shine, creating a template for the rest of his operatic output amounting to 15 operas in all. It was this side to Strauss the composer which would lead to the EMI impresario Walter Legge appropriately referring to him as “Romanticism’s long coda”. 

In these times of recording labels amalgamating, it is indeed appropriate that Deutsche Grammophon has seen fit to release this 33 disc set presenting all fifteen of his operas as well as Jessye Norman’s rapturous recording of the Four Last Songs. Whilst one may have particular favourites (eg. the Schwarzkopf/Karajan Rosenkavalier (EMI) or even Solti’s Salome, herein lies a generous and equally fine collection of performance from a number of labels and vintages. including Solti’s benchmark Elektra, Rosenkavalier and Die Frau Ohne Schatten and Sinopoli’s Salome. 

Whilst most performances are taken from the Universal catalogues of DG and Decca, featuring such fine Straussians as Solti and Böhm, rarer titles like the family drama, Intermezzo is the EMI recording featuring Lucia Popp and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Similar the rarely performed late Der Liebe der Danae, the equally rare Die Schweigsame Frau (after Ben Jonson) and Friedenstag are all live radio recordings. Attractively packaged in a Beardsley illustrated box this not only provides an ideal introduction to Richard Strauss’s operatic world but is an equally fine set of alternatives for those who may already possess other recordings.