POET’S TRAGIC DEATH

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 718, 18 July 1929, Page 9

POET’S TRAGIC DEATH

SAID TO HAVE FOLLOWED SON IN SUICIDE A FAMOUS AUSTRIAN (Australian and'N.Z. Press Association) VIENNA, Wednesday. The death has occurred in the most tragic circumstances of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a well-known Austrian poet. Deceased wrote the libretto lor Richard Strauss’s opera, “Der Rosenkavalier.” as well as other operas by the same composer. Herr Hofmannsthal had attended the funeral of his sou Franz, a young man in his early twenties, who had committed suicide by shooting on Saturday because he could not find congenial work. The father’s death has been attributed to apoplexy, but it is suspected that it also was a case of suicide. Born at Vienna in 1574, Hofmannsthal at the early age of 18 published the play “Yesterday” and wrote the dramatic poem, “The Death of Titian.” A powerful verse play, “The Fool and Death,” brought fame to him. Then came the work “Theatre in Vei’se,” which contains one-act dramas, including “The Woman in the Window,” “The Marriage of Sobeide,” and “The Adventurer and the Singer.” It was on his new version of “Elektra” that Richard Strauss based his opera. One of his outstanding works is “Oedipus and the Sphinx.” Hofmannsthal wrote the libretto for Strauss’s comic opera, Der Rosenkavalier” (1911), and for his one-act opera “Ariadne auf Naxos” (1912). Among his other works are a version of Otway’s “Venice Restored”; the tragedy, “Alcestis”; the comedies “Der Schwierige” (1920) and “Christina’s Homecoming”; the story, “The Woman Without a Shadow”; “Florindo,” “The Book of Friends,” and a tragedy, “The Dream.”