A silver rose is presented as a betrothal token, over shimmering flutes and celesta (1911)
The Act 2 Presentation of the Rose — Octavian and Sophie meet
Opera · German opera
Der Rosenkavalier
26 January 1911, Königliches Opernhaus (Semperoper), Dresden
Richard Strauss · libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
A comedy of manners set in the Vienna of Maria Theresa. An ageing princess takes a teenage lover, then gives him up to a girl his own age, having first sent him to deliver a silver rose as a boorish cousin's betrothal token. The score is drenched in waltzes a century too early for its setting, and the final trio is one of the most admired passages in all opera.
How to spot them
- ▸Vienna in the 1740s; a princess's bedroom, a new-rich merchant's house, a disreputable inn
- ▸Three sopranos — one of them a seventeen-year-old boy played by a woman, who then disguises himself as a chambermaid
- ▸A silver rose presented over high shimmering harmonics from three flutes, celesta and harps
- ▸An oafish bass baron who leaves waltzing and humming about his own luck
- ▸Ends with a trio, a duet and a small boy running back for a dropped handkerchief
Arias & moments — listen
"Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding" — a woman stops the clocks at night to hear time passing (1911)
The Marschallin's Act 1 monologue on ageing
"Hab mir's gelobt, ihn lieb zu haben" — a woman gives her young lover to a rival, in three voices (1911)
The Act 3 final trio, in D flat, for the Marschallin, Octavian and Sophie
"Mit mir, mit mir keine Nacht dir zu lang" — a lecherous baron waltzes off congratulating himself (1911)
Baron Ochs's waltz closing Act 2
A seventeen-year-old count escapes discovery by dressing as a chambermaid named Mariandel (1911)
Octavian in disguise — a woman playing a boy playing a woman
"Ist ein Traum, kann nicht wirklich sein" — a final duet for two sopranos in a plain, folk-like G major (1911)
Octavian and Sophie's closing duet
Quick-fire facts
- •It was the third of six operas Strauss wrote with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, after Elektra.
- •Ernst von Schuch conducted the premiere in Dresden, and special trains were run from Berlin to get audiences there.
- •The setting is Vienna in the 1740s, in the early reign of the Empress Maria Theresa — so the waltzes are a deliberate anachronism.
- •Octavian, Count Rofrano, is a trouser role for mezzo-soprano; Sophie and the Marschallin are sopranos; Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau is a bass.
- •The Marschallin's full title is Marie Therese, Princess von Werdenberg, wife of a field marshal who never appears.
- •Strauss later drew a Rosenkavalier Suite and a waltz sequence from the score, and conducted music for a 1926 silent film of it directed by Robert Wiene.
- •It remains Strauss's most frequently performed opera.
- •The last sound in the opera is the Marschallin's little black page, Mohammed, retrieving Sophie's dropped handkerchief.
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online) — Strauss, Richard: Der Rosenkavalier
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Der Rosenkavalier
- Michael Kennedy — Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma