Deutsche Post 50th Death Anniversary of Richard Strauss

DEUTSCHE POST on 16th September 1999 issued a 300 Pf. (German pfennig) stamp commemorating the 50th Death Anniversary of Richard Strauss, a 20th century classical music composer. This multicoloured offset lithograph featured an older image of Strauss and a scene from his opera "Salome", Op. 54. Perforation comb was 13¼. Size was 35 x 35 mm. Some 30,800,000 copies were printed. The postmark cancellation on this envelope originated from Bonn, and the design incorporates sheet music and instruments used in this composition.

Strauss based the opera on  the 1891 French play "Salomé" by Oscar Wilde. The opera is famous (at the time of its premiere, infamous) for its "Dance of the Seven Veils". The final scene is frequently heard as a concert-piece for dramatic sopranos. The combination of the Christian biblical theme, the erotic and the murderous, which attracted Wilde to the tale, shocked opera audiences from its first appearance. "Salome" was first performed at the Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden on 9 December 1905, and within two years, it had been given in 50 other opera houses. The objection to perform it had much to do about the "Dance of the Seven Veils". Princess Salome is asked to dance for King Herod Antipas. He wants to divorce his first wife and take Salome. his former sister-in-law as wife. She refuses until she asks for the head of Jochanaan (John the Baptist or Yaḥyā ibn Zakarīyā) who Herod Antipas fears and has had imprisoned. This is because Jochanaan has been informed that the marriage might be incestuous, and does not approve of the marriage, thus his imprisonment and decapitation. Some Islamic scholars believe Yaḥyā ibn Zakarīyā's head is inside the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.

Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.