Der Rosenkavalier

In the year that Richard Strauss’s comic opera Der Rosenkavalier was premiered in Dresden, more than a dozen major opera houses in Germany and abroad included the work in their programmes – this was the beginning of an unparalleled triumph. Strauss also helped to popularise the music beyond the scope of the opera house with his two Walzerfolgen (1911/12) and his music for Robert Wiene’s 1926 film, Rosenkavalier.

Strauss’s idea of establishing his own staging concept in line with costume and stage designer Alfred Roller could only be realised in Dresden, Munich, Berlin, Vienna and Milan. Nevertheless, Roller’s designs, modelled on idealised Rococo style, set the tone of productions right up to the 1960s. Only then did directors and designers begin to discover the ambiguity of the opera in their exciting and critical new interpretations. With their analytical approach, they succeeded in bringing this work, which had been composed shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, firmly into the present day.

Regarding the critical new edition of Der Rosenkavalier, the editors write: “A large number of unknown, forgotten, or previously believed-to-be-lost documents have been taken into account. In this way, it places research on the work on a new footing. It presents, in some cases, significant new insights into the work’s conception, its publication, the preparations for the Dresden premiere, its reception, and the circumstances surrounding the creation of the revised study score, which was published not in 1938, as previously assumed, but only in September 1940. Likewise, the study score published by Boosey & Hawkes did not appear as early as 1943, but only after the end of World War II. Furthermore, several authentic alternative passages are published here for the first time, while the cuts in the work that have been common practice to date are critically reexamined.

The title Rosenkavalier reflects, as Strauss himself noted, “the tender, ethereal” nature of the work, iconically represented by the so-called “presentation of the rose” between Octavian and Sophie at the beginning of the second act. Of course, the title was not finalized until May 1910, by which time the first two acts had already been completed in full score. In particular, the variant *Ochs von Lerchenau* was in vogue for a long time. Even beyond the decision on the title, Strauss favored the concept of a comic opera centered on Baron Ochs as a Falstaff-like Don Juan. It was only later that he realized it was specifically the character of the Marschallin who dominated the work’s reception history.”