The joint operatic work of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal: a musical and cultural historical contextualization. Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss maintained a long-standing and intense artistic collaboration, which resulted in successful operas such as Elektra (1909), Der Rosenkavalier (1911), Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), Die ägyptische Helena (1928), and Arabella (1933). From a scholarly perspective, this work has received little attention as it has been categorized as "superficial." Uri Ganani fills this gap with his study by examining the changing significance of the female singing voice in their joint operatic work and contextualizing it historically. In contrast to the heroic Wagnerian opera, which assigned the central role to the orchestra (to the detriment of individual voices), Strauss and Hofmannsthal...