One of the most celebrated writers of the German-speaking world in the pre-war period, Stefan Zweig fled Vienna in 1934, to escape increasing Antisemitism in Austria and Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. Opening in 1935 in Dresden, the “Schweigsame Frau” opera was banned by the Nazi regime after only three performances because composer Richard Strauss refused to remove Zweig’s name from the program. Increasingly despairing, Zweig moved first to England, then to the United States and finally Brazil, where he committed suicide with his wife in 1942.