Visual voice: although Wagner's music dramas had galvanized the world Richard Strauss didn't follow in his footsteps. Instead he created a new, "cinematic" language all his own.(Health)

In what must have been a bizarre scene at the Berlin Hotel Bellevue, a reluctant Richard Strauss played (and sang) the final scene of Salome on the piano for Cosima Wagner on Good Friday 1905. The orchestration was not yet complete, and the work would have to wait until Advent for its world premiere. Cosima was aghast. "This is madness!" she exclaimed. "You are for the exotic. [My son] Siegfried is for the popular." Cosima, beyond judging Salome to be insanity, likely made some anti-Semitic statements after hearing him play the score, for in a sarcastic follow-up letter to Cosima's Berlin visit, Strauss wrote, "I hope that, after making the acquaintance of my crazy Jewish ...