ABSTRACT
Capriccio, the final opera composed by Richard Strauss in 1941 and premiered the following year in Munich, tells the story of the courting of a Countess by two suitors, Words and Music. Each of the suitors is infatuated with the beauty and intelligence that the Countess displays, and each one strives to win her hand in marriage. The hidden ground in the story, however, is the integration of words and music and their transformation to create a new art form, opera.
