“But we will make a resolution: ‘Die Frau Ohne Schatten’ shall be the last romantic opera.” Composer Richard Strauss was around 51 years old when he wrote those words. And he was tired. For years, he had been toiling away on an opera, one that would be among his mightiest and most complex. “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” or “The Woman Without a Shadow” was a monster of a work, requiring a supersized orchestra and special effects galore. And it was little wonder why. “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” told a complex story that spanned the mortal and mythic realms, as a shape-shifting empress tries to steal a shadow, lest she be dragged back to her father, a god. But Strauss struggled to match the story to music. It took eight years from the moment he received the libretto sketch for the opera to reach the stage. Struggling under the pressure to finish this opus, Strauss wrote these words to his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1916, swearing off future romantic works. But he and Von Hofmannsthal would continue their collaboration for years more, creating classics that remain in the opera canon today. See their fairy-tale opera “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” — or “The Woman Without a Shadow” — on stage in our centennial season: sfopera.com/frau (📸: Ron Scherl, featuring Gwyneth Jones and Alfred Muff)