Take a plot where fantasy and realism blend together. Coat it, perfume it and, sometimes, assault it with abundant, incredibly elaborate music. Then imagine a crowd of characters that you will endow, for five of them, with astonishing vocal traits. Finally, unwind the whole thing for almost four hours and you will get The Woman Without a Shadow, created in 1919 in Vienna by Richard Strauss, in close collaboration with the poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
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