On 17 June 1872, Johann Strauss II conducted the biggest concert of his life. The city was Boston, USA, and the promoters provided Strauss with an orchestra and a chorus numbering more than 20,000. One hundred assistant conductors were placed at his disposal, and a cannon shot cued The Blue Danube – the only way of silencing the expectant crowds. Estimates vary, but the audience was reckoned to number between 50,000 and 100,000; in all, there must have been a minimum of 70,000 people present. This month’s Oasis reunion only played to 80,000.

The result, in an age before modern amplification, was much as you might expect. ‘A fearful racket that I shall never forget as long as I live,’ was Strauss’s own description. Still, the point stands. Johann Strauss II was famous; very famous. A Europe-wide newspaper poll, conducted in 1890, named Strauss as the third most popular individual in Europe – pipped to the top slot only by Queen Victoria and (in second place) Otto von Bismarck. Strauss died in 1899, before the era of recorded music, but within his lifetime sheet music for The Blue Danube sold upwards of one million copies.

That’s platinum disc territory, and in the 21st century, the phenomenon endures. The perma-tanned Dutch violinist André Rieu, whose classical pops orchestra is named after Strauss, has picked up some 500 platinum discs while his live shows – built around Strauss’s music – play across the world to stadium-size audiences. His 2018 tour outgrossed Elton John, globally. Again, this is old news. I’m not here to tell you that Johann Strauss’s waltzes, polkas and operetta hits were the pop music of their day: that people loved them, and continue to love them, is a matter of record.

 So why – in 2025, the 200th anniversary of his birth – is there a Strauss-shaped hole in the programmes of our major orchestras and opera companies? Classical music is obsessed with anniversaries and Strauss is proven box office, so where are the festivals, the rediscoveries, the operetta revivals? The Proms has a single Saturday morning concert; the Grange Festival staged Die........

© The Spectator