Die Schweigsame Frau is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig. The work received its premiere on 24 June 1935 in Dresden. It is significant as Strauss's first collaboration on an opera after the death of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. While Hofmannthal had died in 1929, Strauss was still at work on other projects, and did not actively seek another librettist until 1931. At that point, Strauss was put in touch with Zweig, whom he respected as an author. When the two met, they discussed various projects, and eventually settled on an adaptation of Epicene, or The Silent Woman by Ben Jonson. Zweig had already created a German-language version of Jonson's Volpone, and Strauss agreed to the collaboration on the other Jonson play without hesitation.

While Zweig launched immediately into work on the libretto, Strauss still had to complete work on Arabella (with the libretto Hofmannsthal had written). In 1932 Zweig submitted a draft of "Sir Morosus" as he then called it. Jonson's play lent itself well to adaptation as a comic opera. The ruses and mistaken identities that are part of its plot had already become the substance of such operas the Le nozze di Figaro. The major difference between Jonson's play and Zweig's libretto is the aspect of travesty, in which male performers dress as women in the course of the drama. While this is part and parcel of Jonson's play, it is handled differently in the opera.

Die schweigsame Frau was received well from the outset, and the collaboration between Strauss and Zweig seemed as natural as had the previous work with Hofmannsthal. The give-and-take between words and music was handled well by the two collaborators. If a problem existed, however, it was with the political status of Zweig, who was Jewish and living in exile. It would become difficult to mount the production of any works that were the product of a Jewish artist, and future work had to be handled carefully. Strauss was reluctant to forego the collaboration with Zweig, but he also wanted to have his music performed. In the course of completing the opera and facing the treatment of Zweig, Strauss had to decide between artistic integrity and political obeisance. The extant letters to Zweig show Strauss giving into political pressure and essentially severing his relationship with the librettist

The situation with Die schweigsame Frau was difficult, and it had consequences for the rest of Strauss's life. Having found a librettist as talented as Hofmannsthal, he had opportunities for many successful opera projects. For the next collaboration, Strauss worked with Joseph Gregor on an idea he had previously discussed with Zweig, and the result was not the same. That collaboration, Friedenstag, was less dramatic - perhaps less operatic - than Die schweigsame Frau, which remains one of Strauss's more effective operas of the 1930s and stands as evidence of a potentially fruitful collaboration.

The opera is characterized by a flowing, conversational style, which is resembles some of the music in Arabella. Strauss attempted to evoke an earlier era by adapting some pieces from the seventeenth century, even though they are anachronistic in the eighteenth-century setting. Strauss also quoted parts of operas from various eras, including his own Frau ohne Schatten and also made excellent use of various conventions of the typical coloratura aria in the singing lesson scene of the third act. As in Ariadne auf Naxos, Strauss made careful use of quotations about music and opera to add a dimension to the Die schweigsame Frau. With this element deftly set by Strauss, these extratextual ideas underscore the action on stage.



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