Pauline de Ahna

Her repertoire included leading roles in the operas of Beethoven, Humperdinck, Mozart, von Weber, and Wagner.

Strauss credited her as his muse for many of his compositions, including the title role in Salome, the Countess Madeleine in Capriccio, and the Four Last Songs among others.

Roles she performed in Munich included, Agathe in Der Freischütz, Leonore in Fidelio, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, and Ada in Wagner's Die Feen.

After this, de Ahna no longer performed in operas, but continued to sing in concerts of Lieder with her husband as pianist.

In 1904 they gave one such concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and also gave performances at concert halls in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C.[1] In 1906, the couple purchased a block of land at Garmisch-Partenkirchen and had a villa (Strauss Villa) built there with the down payments from the publisher Adolph Fürstner[4] for Richard's opera Salome.

In particular, Strauss portrayed de Ahna both as the hero's companion in Ein Heldenleben and in several sections of Symphonia Domestica.

She was the subject of the one-woman show Die Frau im Schatten, performed by Dame Gwyneth Jones at the 2004 Strauss Festival in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.