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.