The Shadow of the Empress by Larry Wolff - 9781503634589

The Shadow of the EmpressFairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy\nAuthor(s): Larry Wolff\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Stanford University Press, United States\nImprint: Stanford University Press\nISBN-13: 9781503634589, 978-1503634589\nSynopsis\nA beguiling exploration of the last Habsburg monarchs' grip on Europe's historical and cultural imagination.\n\n 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.\n\n The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the.