| In the "Symphonie Phantastique" by Hector Berlioz, composed in 1830, we experience a waltz in superb orchestral brilliance. The content is the vision of his beloved at a ball, before her execution is to be carried out. In his Faust opera "Margarethe" Charles Gounod makes the young Faust meet Margarethe during a waltz scene. In Tchaikovskys "Eugen Onegin" a waltz scene prepares the duel in which Lansky is to meet his death. Mozart allows Don Giovanni , before his descent to hell, to hear a melody from the opera "Una cosa rara" by Martin y Soler - the first time in music history that a waltz can be heard within an opera. The examples quoted intend to show that there is often a close connection between a waltz and death. The great Strauß waltzes often contain a lot of sadness.
Johann Strauß has developed the instrumental waltz to a grandiose height and a remarkable depth. No further development was possible and he had no successors. In 1870, after his brothers and his mothers death, he handed over the Strauß orchestra to his brother Edward and dedicated all his efforts to the vocal waltz in a genre that was new for him: the comic light opera which originated in Paris. Through Strauß compositions this period has become known as the "Golden Age" of the operetta, with the "Fledermaus" as its peak product.
Melody and rhythm in a Strauß waltz 
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