# 20th Century Operatic Masterpieces: Part Five - Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier



## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

20th Century Operatic Masterpieces: Part Five - Strauss' _Der Rosenkavalier_



















Some regard Der Rosenkavalier as Strauss' finest opera, and indeed, it has remained consistently popular since its premiere in 1911. Composed during 1909 and 1910 -- immediately after Elektra, Strauss' first collaboration with dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal -- Der Rosenkavalier is an original story, conceived jointly by Hofmannsthal and Strauss through extensive correspondence. It represents an intentional departure from Elektra (an adaptation of Sophocles' play) in both substance and tone, and the result is one of the most sophisticated libretti ever written -- full of subtle exchanges and turns of literary phrase. While the story was to have been a farce hinging upon the revelation of the character Mariandel as Octavian, Hofmannsthal developed the libretto into a more complex plot in which the primary narrative concerns the shifting relationship between the Marschallin and Octavian.

Hofmannsthal cast the drama in three acts, a more traditional scheme than Elektra's extended one-act plan, and perhaps a nod to the work's eighteenth century setting. Strauss also makes use of a conspicuously conservative musical idiom, eschewing the frankly dissonant and often abrasive textures he had used in both Elektra and Salome. At the same time, the orchestration of Der Rosenkavalier is both richer and marked throughout by delicate and shimmering sonorities. Strauss uses waltzes throughout the score to evoke a sentimental mood and to denote the middle-class sensibilities of Baron Ochs. Waltz themes are integral to each act, and the opera's orchestral waltz sequences, along with the more formal Rosenkavalier Suite (1945), remain popular as independent concert works. The opera's most impressive music occurs in the Act Three Trio between Oktavian, Sophie, and the Marschallin. Here, Strauss uses the three women's voices to convey the emotions of a young ingenue, her youthful suitor, and the mature Marschallin to great effect, the orchestra providing a telling underscoring. The static quality of the Trio creates an elegiac mood that at once combines the expression of youthful love with mature restraint.

Der Rosenkavalier, premiered in Dresden in January 1911, was received with great enthusiasm. The opera has remained a fixture of the stage, as evidenced by new productions in every decade since. Strauss attempted to recapture Der Rosenkavalier's popular appeal in his subsequent stage works; while some, like Arabella (1929-1932), are outstanding, they never eclipsed the successful alchemy of text and music that has ensured Der Rosenkavalier's permanence.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

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For me, _Der Rosenkavalier_ is Strauss' finest opera. There are so many beautiful and memorable moments throughout its whole duration. One first-listen, I honestly wasn't impressed with this opera, but this was after I had become obsessed with _Salome_ and _Elektra_. I thought that Strauss couldn't top what he did in these two operas. After some persistence on my part and getting my hands on Bernstein's recording of _Der Rosenkavalier_ on Sony (the original issue and then a Japanese DSD remaster), this work finally clicked for me and I ended up listening to this recording about three times in a row. After I listened to Bernstein's recording so many times, I listened to Karajan's late 50s recording on EMI (reissued and remastered on Warner Classics in a deluxe book, which is the version I own) and I loved this opera even more. Solti's performance is also quite good --- albeit quite different than Karajan, but has some of the boldness and brashness of the Bernstein performance. Anyway, what do you guys think of this opera?


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

This is a great opera. It has a rather subtle libretto, which is a major part of my appreciation for Hugo von Hofmansthal. The score is just beautiful from beginning to end. Karajan's 1956 recording is my favorite, and I share your enthusiasm for Bernstein and Solti. Other recordings of note are those by Erich and Carlos Kleiber, two recordings by Karl Böhm, a later recording by Karajan (1982), and a 1955 live recording by Hans Knappertsbusch.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

It took me a long time to come to grips with this opera. I picked up the Bernstein on LP and tried to like it, but the length of the thing and the subject were a turn off. Then, as now, I want some blood and gore in my operas - so Elektra and Salome were perfect. Then I went to a live performance in Los Angeles, James Conlon conducting. It was a long afternoon. But I do like the suites that have been derived from the opera, and I've even played some of the music and it was great fun. I lump it with Fledemaus and Marriage of Figaro: silly. Maybe someday I'll come to grips with it and find a way to like it more. Maybe a DVD version will help?


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## Lisztianwagner (2 mo ago)

It is one of my favourite Strauss' operas, absolutely outstanding! It may sound decorative and artificial on the surface, but behind the appearence that seems to look at the past, Mozart, Italian Opera and Johann Strauss (like a sort of Neoclassicism), there's an original, modern conception flowing without solution of continuity, with a powerful, huge orchestration, a colourful and dramatic timbric texture, which also softens the dense harmonic richness; a great rhythmic flexibility and variety, with different tempi played together, and a splendid use of a sort of letimotives, peculiar tones to depict the different characters, an element that is brilliantly shown in Hofmannstahl's very elaborated libretto too, as it creates, with a wide rank of possibilities, a language through which the characters reflect themselves, their own personalities and their social class at the same time. Strauss didn't merely reproduce and come back to the past as something crystallized and abstract to copy, because its example had already been absorbed and developed in his style as something still alive and effective. Beside, as a great lover of the viennese waltz, I can't be but enchanted by the lively, bright use of the waltzes in this opera.
I've got two recordings of the _Rosenkavalier_, both Karajan's performances, the 1956 and the 1982 recording.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

There's a part of it which is quite profound and touching, I'm thinking of the marschallin's reflections on aging. But really it's an absolutely dreadul opera because it's so snobbish -- all but the highest ranking nobility -- the regal Princess MarieThérèse von Werdenberg and the gallant Count Octavian Rofrano - are presented as boorish unsophisticated uncouth pond life.


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

Mandryka said:


> There's a part of it which is quite profound and touching, I'm thinking of the marschallin's reflections on aging. But really it's an absolutely dreadul opera because it's so snobbish -- all but the highest ranking nobility -- the regal Princess MarieThérèse von Werdenberg and the gallant Count Octavian Rofrano - are presented as boorish unsophisticated uncouth pond life.


With your username, are you more fond of _Arabella_?


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

mbhaub said:


> It took me a long time to come to grips with this opera. I picked up the Bernstein on LP and tried to like it, but the length of the thing and the subject were a turn off. Then, as now, I want some blood and gore in my operas - so Elektra and Salome were perfect. Then I went to a live performance in Los Angeles, James Conlon conducting. It was a long afternoon. But I do like the suites that have been derived from the opera, and I've even played some of the music and it was great fun. I lump it with Fledemaus and Marriage of Figaro: silly. Maybe someday I'll come to grips with it and find a way to like it more. Maybe a DVD version will help?


Blood and gore in your operas? You're not open to different kinds of operas? How about psychological ones? I mean to level this kind of criticism against it seems wrong-headed to me.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

I'm probably odd in preferring _Die Frau ohne Schatten_ and _Ariadne Auf Naxos_ among Strauss's operas, but _Der Rosenkavalier_ does still rank highly for me. It's easily one of the richest, lushest, most beautiful operas ever written, with Strauss striking a finely wrought balance between his classical (Mozart, J. Strauss) influences and more modern styles. There's that balance in the libretto as well, being both a classic comedy of a lecherous aristocrat getting his comeuppance and a meditation on the transience of youthful beauty and love. If you can get three great female voices (as the famous Karajan recording does) then that final trio should melt any audience into their seats with the sheer gorgeousness of the voices, melodies, and lush harmonies. Perhaps the only thing it's lacking is a few more "sticky" melodies (the one "waltz" theme is all it really has) to more strongly harken to its classical influences, but I find it hard to complain given the kaleidoscopic array of shifting harmonic colors and textures that dazzles throughout.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I'm probably odd in preferring _Die Frau ohne Schatten_ and _Ariadne Auf Naxos_ among Strauss's operas, but _Der Rosenkavalier_ does still rank highly for me. It's easily one of the richest, lushest, most beautiful operas ever written, with Strauss striking a finely wrought balance between his classical (Mozart, J. Strauss) influences and more modern styles. There's that balance in the libretto as well, being both a classic comedy of a lecherous aristocrat getting his comeuppance and a meditation on the transience of youthful beauty and love. If you can get three great female voices (as the famous Karajan recording does) then that final trio should melt any audience into their seats with the sheer gorgeousness of the voices, melodies, and lush harmonies. Perhaps the only thing it's lacking is a few more "sticky" melodies (the one "waltz" theme is all it really has) to more strongly harken to its classical influences, but I find it hard to complain given the kaleidoscopic array of shifting harmonic colors and textures that dazzles throughout.


You're not odd as I love _Daphne_ and this is an opera that gets hardly any love at all. I need to spend more time with _Die Frau ohne Schatten_, though. I've listened to it only a handful of times and I'm a hardcore Straussian. _Ariadne auf Naxos_ is wonderful, too! Your take on _Der Rosenkavalier_ was great to read.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> There's a part of it which is quite profound and touching, I'm thinking of the marschallin's reflections on aging. But really it's an absolutely dreadul opera because it's so snobbish -- all but the highest ranking nobility -- the regal Princess MarieThérèse von Werdenberg and the gallant Count Octavian Rofrano - are presented as boorish unsophisticated uncouth pond life.


A strange criticism that isn't based on much. If we go on class ranking we basically have the The Marschallin -> The Count -> The Baron -> Sophie/Her Father. If we rank by "boorishness" it's The Baron -> The Count -> Sophie/Her Father/The Marschallin. I don't see much correlation there except that the Marchallin is the highest ranking and least boorish (but she's no less boorish than Sophie and her father). The Baron, who's in the middle of class ranking, is easily more boorish than Sophie and her father, who have no titles. I also think it's incredibly dubious to think that a work about love and aging that pulls on comedic traditions of a lecherous oaf getting his comeuppance is trying to make some kind of commentary on social class when there's so little representation of the various classes. Why should we treat characters as representatives of their social class?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> A strange criticism that isn't based on much. If we go on class ranking we basically have the The Marschallin -> The Count -> The Baron -> Sophie/Her Father. If we rank by "boorishness" it's The Baron -> The Count -> Sophie/Her Father/The Marschallin. I don't see much correlation there except that the Marchallin is the highest ranking and least boorish (but she's no less boorish than Sophie and her father). The Baron, who's in the middle of class ranking, is easily more boorish than Sophie and her father, who have no titles. I also think it's incredibly dubious to think that a work about love and aging that pulls on comedic traditions of a lecherous oaf getting his comeuppance is trying to make some kind of commentary on social class when there's so little representation of the various classes. Why should we treat characters as representatives of their social class?


Don't forget the low class criminals Valzacchi and Annina. But yes, Strauss is cool about the aspirational upper middle classes like the Faninals. Bourgeois gentilshommes. 

Ochs is a sexual predator, calling him an oaf doesn't do justice to his nastiness. 

And nothing is more important for explaining human life than class.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> And nothing is more important for explaining human life than class.


I think this notion is pure Marxist nonsense. Class is indeed important, but underlying class are subjects like psychology (especially evolutionary psychology) that are far more important if you want to understand why class systems exist at all. However, this ignores the point that, interpretationally speaking, not every depiction of classes is a commentary on class, nor are its characters meant to be representative of their class. Unless you think all lower-class folks are saints and all upper-class folks are pure evil then there's nothing wrong with having good and bad characters on either side.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> The formation of ideas, thought and values of people are the result of material relationships of people.


The formation of ideas, thoughts, and values are the results of many causal factors; class relationships are among them, but hardly the only ones. A good chunk of our ideas, thoughts, and values are inherited, or reactions to what is inherited; and that inheritance can have an immense variety of sources and origins going back centuries.


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