Intermezzo is based on an actual — and very upsetting — incident in Richard Strauss’s life. In 1903 an Italian opera company was appearing at Berlin’s Kroll Theater. One night after a performance the conductor, Josef Stransky, the star tenor, Emilio De Marchi, (who had been Puccini’s first Cavaradossi in Tosca just three years earlier), and his manager, an American named Edgar Strakosch, went to the bar at the Read more
