REPRINT SERIES

 Capriccio is Strauss’s final stage work (composed 1940–41), described by the composer as “a conversation piece for music.” The libretto was prepared with Clemens Krauss (and with input from Strauss) and the opera stages a salon-style debate about the primacy of words versus music in opera, centered on the Countess Madeleine and her two suitors, the poet and the composer. It is written as a single act (with continuous episodes) and is intentionally intimate and discursive rather than dramatically grand.

The first performance took place in Munich on 28 October 1942; the work’s scoring is large and refined—Strauss uses full orchestral forces plus on-stage and off-stage ensembles (and he supplies chamber-like textures for the embedded sextet), producing a wide palette that nevertheless always serves the conversational, theatrical surface rather than bombast. The vocal writing is demanding, especially for the Countess, and the opera ends without a decisive dramatic resolution, leaving the final question—words or music?—deliberately open.

Capriccio’s duration is substantial for a single-act work—performances commonly run around 130 minutes, reflecting the work’s many scena-like episodes and the extended sextet that functions as the opera’s musical centerpiece. Because of its conversational emphasis, subtle scoring and refined dramatic balance, Capriccio has become widely regarded as Strauss’s elegiac farewell to opera rather than a theatrical spectacle.