Letters of an Utopian Love:

“From a woman like Olga words are memories” Johann Strauss said this in one of his many letters to his Russian beloved Olga Smirnitskaya. Her replies have not come down to us. To give her a voice, Milena Michiko Flašar has created a literary figure for the play Blitz und Donner. But what do we know about the real Olga? Her love affair with Strauss was not the whole story. What does musicology have to say about Strauss’ emotional outbursts? And how does the play deal with the established facts? – An intriguing controversy between art and scholarship.