Johann Strauss II
b Vienna , October 25, 1825; d Vienna , June 3, 1899
Virtually synonymous with the city of Vienna itself, Johann Strauss II is author to 16 operettas as well as hundreds of waltzes, polkas, quadrilles and marches. Yet his success is due the persistence of fate and inborn talent, for his famous father Johann senior forbade his three sons to follow him into the music profession. Wife Anna must have suspected some musical skill when she heard her son tenuously plinking out his first waltzes on the piano at an early age. She saw to it that he secretly received musical instruction right under father's nose (as much for revenge as anything else, for her husband was frequently absent and unfaithful).
When Johann senior found out, he smashed his son's violin to bits, but that didn't keep the young man from starting his own orchestra at age 19. For three years the two didn't speak, until the younger Johann made amends by serenading the elder Strauss with his own waltzes. By this time the waltz had become enormously popular in an increasingly urbane and growing city. The demand for dance bands was huge and both men prospered. When Strauss senior died in 1849, his son took over his father's orchestra.
The pressure of managing the bands along with the constant demand to supply new music exhausted Johann junior and in 1853 he had a nervous collapse. Realizing the legacy must go on, Anna Strauss stepped in and persuaded her other two sons, first Josef and then Eduard to step up to the plate. Though he was already a successful engineer, Josef had a sufficient musical background to take over and managed to pen a few waltzes himself before his untimely death in 1870. Eduard was a little more reluctant ? already somewhat of a dandy, he had his eye on a diplomatic career. Begrudgingly he followed his mother's wishes and became a conductor, after first playing in the orchestra, so his older brother could focus on composing. But there was a certain degree of acrimony between the two men, and after Johann's death, an embittered Eduard would burn all of his brothers' manuscripts and unpublished music.
Johann Strauss turned to the theater and thanks in part to the efforts of his first wife, Henriette ?Jetty? Treffz, his first opera to be performed, Indigo und die vierzig Räuber made it to the stage of the Theater an der Wien in 1871 (an earlier effort, based on Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, remained unperformed). It was an instant success, but did not last in the repertory for very long. A second operetta, Carneval in Rome, was presented two years later, again receiving initial enthusiasm but not achieving any real longevity. Strauss finally hit it on the mark with his third attempt, Die Fledermaus, in 1874.
The composer had a similar track record with his three wives. Eight years older, Jetty was an interesting choice, as the famed 37-year-old bachelor could have had practically any lady in Vienna . She was a woman with a dubious past. Once a successful soprano (she had sung Giulietta opposite Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient's Romeo in a production of Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi , the latter soprano having so captivated a young Richard Wagner in the role), she was also the mother of five illegitimate children (who, subject to parenting skills reminiscent of Giuseppina Strepponi, Giuseppe Verdi's longtime companion, were not in her charge). She had had two more daughters by her then-current lover Moritz Tedesco. It was under these circumstances that she had met Strauss and the two fell in love at first sight.
In spite of her checkered past, Jetty was an excellent hostess and good adviser to Strauss with excellent connections. But as she approached her sixties, the couple drifted apart. A visit from one of her long-lost children didn't help the situation, and after a surprised Johann refused a request for financial assistance, an emotionally overwhelmed Jetty fell unconscious and soon died of a stroke in 1878. The composer was free to marry again, and he didn't waste any time. Several weeks later (to the shock of all Vienna ) he announced his engagement to Angelika ?Lili? Dittrich, an actress 25 years his junior. Not surprisingly, Lili didn't take to the suburbs and to her husband's quiet way of life. The couple separated after only five years.
Johann soon met his third and final wife, a recently widowed friend of the family, Adele Strauss (no relation). The composer's severance from Lili posed a problem, as divorce was not an option in Catholic Austria. He solved the problem by obtaining citizenship in the protestant duchy of Saxe-Coburg, again to the mortification of Vienna . This union proved to be a happy one, and Adele continued to preside over the composer's legacy long after his death.
Strauss's life couldn't have had a more fitting end. His best operetta, Die Fledermaus, had finally been dignified by a mounting at the Hofoper in 1894, and after conducting a reprisal five years later, Strauss fell ill with pneumonia. He died a few days later, ending his fifty-year hold over Vienna 's musical life.
n spite of his somewhat scandalous personal life, Strauss could do no lasting damage in the eyes of the Viennese, who ravenously gobbled up nearly everything that flowed from his pen. Other than Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron; 1885), his later works have little lasting value. Sadly, Strauss had no sense of theater and would accept nearly any libretto handed to him. Yet from the dance hall, he developed his gift for glorious melody and was held in high regard by his peers ? Jacques Offenbach, Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi all had generous praise for Vienna 's venerable waltz king.
