Hofmannsthal, Hugo von

Hofmannsthal, Hugo von (h`gō fən hōf`mänstäl), 1874–1929, Austrian dramatist and poet. His first verses were published when he was 16 years old, and his play The Death of Titian (1892, tr. 1913) when he was 18. His varied gifts as poet and as dramatist are shown in his librettos for Richard Strauss, including Elektra (1903), Der Rosenkavalier (1911), Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), and Arabella (1933). After World War I, he was one of the founders of the Salzburg Festival, where his plays, such as the tragedy Der Turm (1925), his adaptation of Everyman (1911, tr. 1917), are regularly produced.

Bibliography

See his Selected Writings (3 vol., 1952–63); his correspondence with Strauss (1955, tr. 1961); studies by H. Broch (1984), M. Hamburger (1970), and B. Bennett (1988).

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Hofmannsthal, Hugo von

(born Feb. 1, 1874, Vienna, Austria—died July 15, 1929, Rodaun, a suburb of Vienna) Austrian poet, dramatist, and essayist. Born into an aristocratic banking family, he made his reputation with lyric poems (the first published when he was 16) and verse plays, including The Death of Titian (1892) and Death and the Fool (1893). He renounced lyrical poetry in a 1902 essay and thereafter turned to theatre; his later plays include Christina's Journey Home (1910), Everyman (1911), The Difficult Man (1921), and The Tower (1925). In 1906 he began a celebrated collaboration with the composer Richard Strauss; their remarkable first opera, Elektra (1908), was followed by Der Rosenkavalier (1910), Ariadne auf Naxos (1912, revised 1916), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), and others. In 1920 he cofounded the Salzburg Festival with Max Reinhardt.