Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy

"In 1919 the last Habsburg rulers, Emperor Karl and Empress Zita, left Austria and went into exile. That same year, the fairy tale opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow) had its premiere at the Vienna Opera. Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and German composer Richard Strauss worked on Die Frau ohne Schatten through the bitter war years, imagining that it would triumphantly appear after the war to mark the victory of the German and Habsburg empires. Instead, the premiere came in theaftermath of catastrophic defeat. Strauss and von Hofmannsthal had turned emperors and empresses into fantastic fairy-tale characters; meanwhile, following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of World War I, their real-life counterparts wereremoved from political life in Europe and began to be regarded as anachronistic, semi-mythological figures. This book explores how the changing circumstances of cultural production and reception before, during, and after World War I reshaped the political meanings of Die Frau ohne Schatten. Historian Larry Wolff's story of the opera's composition and performance history with a personal narrative of his Habsburg and Viennese family. Reflecting on the seismic cultural shifts that rocked post-imperial Europe, Wolff follows the real-life Emperor and Empress through the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the Cold War up until Zita's death in 1989, when she had herself become a fairy-tale figure"--
A beguiling exploration of the last Habsburg monarchs' grip on Europe's historical and cultural imagination.In 1919 the last Habsburg rulers, Emperor Karl and Empress Zita, left Austria, going into exile. That same year, the fairy-tale opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow), featuring a mythological emperor and empress, premiered at the Vienna Opera. Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and German composer Richard Strauss created Die Frau ohne Schatten through the bitter years of World War I, imagining it would triumphantly appear after the victory of the German and Habsburg empires. Instead, the premiere came in the aftermath of catastrophic defeat.The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy explores how the changing circumstances of politics and society transformed their opera and its cultural meanings before, during, and after the First World War.Strauss and Hofmannsthal turned emperors and empresses into fantastic fairy-tale characters; meanwhile, following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy after the war, their real-life counterparts, removed from political life in Europe, began to be regarded as anachronistic, semi-mythological figures. Reflecting on the seismic cultural shifts that rocked post-imperial Europe, Larry Wolff follows the story of Karl and Zita after the loss of their thrones. Karl died in 1922, but Zita lived through the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the Cold War. By her death in 1989, she had herself become a fairy-tale figure, a totem of imperial nostalgia.Wolff weaves together the story of the opera's composition and performance; the end of the Habsburg monarchy; and his own family's life in and exile from Central Europe, providing a rich new understanding of Europe's cataclysmic twentieth century, and our contemporary relationship to it.