Theatre Register

Oscar Straus

Shows · Oscar Straus

Composer 1870–1954

Oscar Nathan Straus (6 March 1870 – 11 January 1954) was a Viennese composer of operettas, film scores, and songs. He also wrote about 500 cabaret songs, chamber music, and orchestral and choral works. His original name was actually Strauss, but for professional purposes he deliberately omitted the final 's'. He wished not to be associated with the musical Strauss family of Vienna. However, he did follow the advice of Johann Strauss II in 1898 about abandoning the prospective lure of writing waltzes for the more lucrative business of writing for the theatre. The son of a Jewish family, he studied music in Berlin under Max Bruch, and became an orchestral conductor, working at the Überbrettl c…

Also credited on4 works

Always You
The Chocolate Soldier
The Merry Widow
Three Waltzes

These come off the person record, which names a work and not a production. So we can say this name is attached to the work and we cannot say which staging, or in what capacity. For a composer or a writer that is the whole career we hold; there is no cast list to find them in.

In the literature6 passages

  • Like Fall , Oscar Straus (1870-1954) had also written for the cabarets, including some presented by Max Reinhardt . Alan Jay Lerner says, “He was the only one of them all with an appreciation of comedy.” [53] In 1908, Straus ’s Der tapfere Soldat (“ The Courageous Soldier”) opened with a libretto by Rudolf Bernauer (1880-1953) and Leopold…ebooks/Atkey, Mel/Million Miles from Broadway_ Musical Theatre Beyond New York and London, A - Mel Atkey.txt
  • 6. Heidi Schiller’s line about Oscar Straus bringing her “white roses” (pronounced “vite rozez” by Justine Johnston) was cut.ebooks/Chapin, Ted/Everything Was Possible_ The Birth of the Musical Follies (Applause Books) - Ted Chapin.txt
  • An often overlooked model for American musical theatre is German operetta, particularly the enormously popular Oscar Straus operetta The Chocolate Soldier, an adaptation of Arms and the Man, which Shaw hated because he felt it trivialized his play (a hatred no doubt intensified by his principled nonparticipation in its profits, which were…ebooks/Engel, Lehman/Words with Music_ Creating the Broadway Musical Libretto - Lehman Engel.txt
  • an operetta with music by Oscar Straus; The Master Servant {Le valet maitre, 1938), with Armont; Cleopa1937),theatre-pdfs/McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, v. 3 (I-N).txt
  • The Chocolate Soldier (1909). Libretto: Rudolph Bernauer and Leopold Jacobson; music: Oscar Straus. Operetta whose story is taken from G. B. the Man.theatre-pdfs/McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, v. 3 (I-N).txt
  • PRODUCTIONS AND CASTS THE CHOCOLATE SOLDIER with Music by Oscar Straus; Original Lyrics/Book, Stanislaus Stange; Based on play Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw; Musical Adaptation, Albin Konopka; New Lyrics, Ted Drachman; New Book/Direction, Larry Carpenter; Choreography, Danil Pelzig; Music director, Mr. Konopka;theatre-pdfs/Theatre World/Theatre World, 1990-1991 Season, v. 47 (Willis).txt

Passages naming this person, found by keyword across 178 books. A keyword match is not a biography, and a common name will pull in the wrong one.

What this page does not know

  • What this person played. No cast list we hold records a character against a performer.
  • Any staging. This name appears in no production cast list we hold — 1,877 of 7,139 people are in that position, most of them writers, composers and designers rather than performers.
  • Which of the credits above the roles on this record — composer — apply to. The roles sit on the person and never on a credit, so a director who also acted looks the same here as one who did not.

Something wrong here? Correct a field or report the problem. Every change is recorded in public under the contributor licence.