Oscar Straus (composer)

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Oscar Straus (6 March 1870 - 11 January 1954) was a Viennese composer of operettas. An anecdote states that his original name was actually Strauss, but for professional purposes he deliberately omitted the final 's', since he wished not to be associated with the illustrious 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.

He studied music in Berlin under Max Bruch, and became an orchestral conductor, working at the Überbrettl cabaret. He went back to Vienna and began writing operettas, becoming a serious rival to Franz Lehár. When Lehár's popular The Merry Widow premiered in 1905, Straus was said to have remarked "Das kann ich auch!" (I can also do that!). In 1939, following the Nazi Anschluss, he fled to Paris and then to Hollywood. After the war, he returned to Europe, and settled at Bad Ischl, where he died.

Straus's best-known works are Ein Walzertraum (A Waltz Dream), and The Chocolate Soldier (Der tapfere Soldat).

The waltz arrangement from the former is probably his most enduring orchestral work.

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