As we look back on Strauss’s long and prodigious career, it might all seem to be the inevitable product of superlative technique and talent – so much so that we might overlook the people who contributed to Strauss’s career and legacy from his days as a child prodigy to the recording studio decades after his death. This chapter takes stock of a wide range of figures who helped to set Strauss along his professional path, including aunts, uncles, and other extended family, his father Franz, the conductors Hans von Bülow, Franz Wüllner, Ernst von Schuch, Gustav Mahler, Franz Schalk, Hans Knappertsbusch, Karl Böhm, and Clemens Krauss, and singers Maria Jeritza, Lotte Lehman, Richard Mayr, Anna Bahr-Mildenburg, Marie Gutheil-Schoder, and Elisabeth Schumann. In various ways, some direct and others indirect, these champions contributed to the success and legacy of one of Germany’s most enduring composers.

Richard Strauss’s contacts with Vienna spanned more than six decades, from the time of his brief stint as a university student in 1882 through the Allied air campaigns of 1944. This chapter focuses on the city of Vienna during the period of Strauss’s tenure as codirector of the State Opera from 1919–24, years defined by the founding of the First Austrian Republic and policies instituted by the Municipal Council in response to ongoing economic turmoil. While the situation was less dire than in Berlin, Vienna was nonetheless a city in crisis when Strauss arrived in early December 1919. Examination of “Red Vienna,” named for initiatives of the ruling Social Democratic Party, serves as context for the cultural life in which he participated as a well-respected and well-paid musical celebrity. Attention then shifts to Strauss’s life and work in Vienna with an emphasis on the institutions and figures comprising his private and professional orbit.