Oscar Straus (composer)


Oscar Nathan Straus was a Viennese composer of operettas, film scores, and songs. He also wrote about 500 cabaret songs, chamber music, and orchestral and choral works. His original name was actually Strauss, but for professional purposes he deliberately omitted the final 's'. He wished not to be associated with the musical Strauss family of Vienna. However, he did follow the advice of Johann Strauss II in 1898 about abandoning the prospective lure of writing waltzes for the more lucrative business of writing for the theatre.
The son of a Jewish family, he studied music in Berlin under Max Bruch, and became an orchestral conductor, working at the Überbrettl cabaret. He went back to Vienna and began writing operettas, becoming a serious rival to Franz Lehár. When Lehár's popular The Merry Widow premiered in 1905, Straus was said to have remarked "Das kann ich auch!". In 1939, after the Anschluss, he fled to Paris, where he received the honour of a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. In 1940 he fled via Portugal to the United States, where he settled in Hollywood. After the war he returned to Europe, and settled at Bad Ischl, where he died. His grave is in the Bad Ischl Friedhof.
Straus' best-known works are Ein Walzertraum, and The Chocolate Soldier. The waltz arrangement from the former is probably his most enduring orchestral work. Among his most famous works is the theme from the 1950 film La Ronde.

Works

Operettas

  • Die lustigen Nibelungen – 1904
  • Zur indischen Witwe – 1905
  • Hugdietrichs Brautfahrt – 1906
  • Ein Walzertraum – 1907
  • Der tapfere Soldat – 1908
  • Didi – 1908
  • Das Tal der Liebe – 1909
  • Mein junger Herr – 1910
  • Die kleine Freundin – 1911
  • Der tapfere Cassian – 1912
  • The Dancing Viennese – 1912
  • Love and Laughter – 1913
  • Rund um die Liebe – 1914
  • Liebeszauber – 1916
  • Eine Ballnacht – 1918
  • Der letzte Walzer – 1920
  • Die Perlen der Cleopatra – 1923
  • Die Teresina – 1925
  • Die Königin – 1926
  • Marietta –
  • Eine Frau, die weiß, was sie will – 1932
  • Drei Walzer – 1935
  • Die Musik kommt – 1948
  • Ihr erster Walzer – 1950
  • Bozena – 1952

Ballets

  • Colombine – 1904
  • Die Prinzessin von Tragant – 1912

Orchestral music

Film scores