By Shirley Apthorp [Financial Times, 21 December 2008]

Would Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo have enjoyed more success with a better subject? Certainly the banality of this 1924 opera has been a factor in its subsequent neglect. Strauss wrote the libretto himself, basing it on a domestic drama from his home life. The story is fluffy, the piece titanically self-referential. Yet for all its dramaturgical flaws, Intermezzo overflows with glorious music.