Gottfried von Einem's Dantons Tod (Danton's Death), which premiered at the first postwar Salzburg Festival in 1947, received widespread acclaim and established the composer's reputation. Adapted from Georg Büchner's play about the French revolutionary leader Georges Danton, who was guillotined during the Terror, the opera was a first step toward the "rehabilitation" of German composers after the war.

Throughout Einem's career he stood fast against the prevailing winds of serialism, preferring a personal post-Romantic idiom. The most obvious influence upon Einem in Dantons Tod is Stravinsky, though one also hears echoes of Hindemith. Einem's close study of Berg's operas is evident as well in the structural use of musical forms and figuration instead of leitmotifs. Just as Richard Strauss included waltzes in his operas, no matter how anachronistic the setting, Einem also employs older dance forms for dramatic effect: the frenzied carmagnole danced by the revolutionary mob anticipates the grim dance of death that concludes Einem's last major opera, Der Besuch der alten Dame (The Visit of the Old Lady). The composer's ravishing cantilena writing in Dantons Tod does much to debunk the widespread though ridiculous notion that postwar operas lack melody.

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