List of operas by Richard Strauss

The German composer Richard Strauss (1864–1949) was prolific and long-lived, writing 16 operas from 1892 up until his death in 1949. Strauss "emerged soon after the deaths of Wagner and Brahms as the most important living German composer",^[1] and was crucial in inaugurating the musical style of Modernism. His operas were dominant representatives of the genre in his time, particularly his earlier ones: Salome (1905), Elektra (1909), Der Rosenkavalier (1911) and Ariadne auf Naxos (1912). His earliest work, Der Kampf mit dem Drachen (comp. 1876), was a juvenile sketch, and is sometimes not counted as part of his operatic oeuvre; his final opera, Des Esels Schatten [de] (comp. 1947–1949), was unfinished at his death and completed by Karl Haussner in 1964.