Die Liebe der Danae

Die Liebe der Danae (The Love of Danaë) is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Joseph Gregor, loosely based on a sketch written in 1920 in the style of Jacques Offenbach's satirical works, "Danae, or The Marriage of Convenience", by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

Strauss worked on the score in 1937, 1938 and into 1939, although he was pre-occupied with completing Daphne, developing ideas with Gregor and finally replacing him as librettist for Capriccio, and then succumbed to illness, which caused postponement for several months into 1940. The opera was finally finished on 28 June 1940.

The work is an ingenious mixture of comedy and Greek mythology, and the final act "contains the opera's finest music, a fact recognized by Strauss."