This chapter describes the relationship between Luigi Pirandello and the Austrian stage director Max Reinhardt as a drama in three acts. The first act, “The Comedy of a commedia da fare,” addresses how Pirandello’s Six Characters made the author popular in German-speaking countries despite misunderstandings of the text created by arbitrary translation and Reinhardt’s interpretation of the play in a Calderónian manner as the drama of humans after the death of God. The second act, “The Tragedy of Misunderstanding,” shows how Pirandello’s Berlin years ended in a gigantic failure in 1930 when Tonight We Improvise was booed by the audience, an event for which the author blamed “the Reinhardt group.” However, the third act, “A Slow and Mild Process of Disentangling,” recounts an eventual reconciliation, which culminated in the project (ultimately unrealized) for an American film of Six Characters during Reinhardt’s exile in the United States.

From his early experiences as a conductor to the final performances of his operas, Richard Strauss collaborated with the most accomplished artists in the German-speaking theater. These associations set standards for productions of his stage works which were essential for their short- and long-term success. Important collaborators included the directors Max Reinhardt and Rudolf Hartmann, choreographers Heinrich Kröller and the duo of Pino and Pia Mlakar, and designers Alfred Roller and Ludwig Sievert. These and other partnerships flourished in the cities which Strauss favored for his premieres: Dresden, Munich, and Vienna. Under the auspices of the Salzburg Festival, Strauss and his stage collaborators established a vital legacy of production that continues into the present.

Strauss’s successful tenure in Berlin (1898–1918) is closely tied to the cultural environment of the German capital, where the local artistic sphere provided ideas, contacts, and opportunities that enabled him to develop professionally. This chapter explores the rise of Berlin during the nineteenth century as a key urban center, while documenting the city’s cultural panorama. It discusses the city’s most important musical institutions and summarizes characteristic aspects of its musical life, examining Strauss’s role in the broader art scene through his personal links and institutional affiliations. As modernist tendencies at the turn of the century conflicted with traditional ideals, Strauss emerged as a figure who, as a servant of the court but also a modernist, was able to reconcile these conflicting views.