Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose or The Rose-Bearer[1]), Op. 59, is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.[2] It is loosely adapted from Louvet de Couvrai's novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas and Molière's comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac.[3] It was first performed at the Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden on 26 January 1911 under the direction of Max Reinhardt,[4] with Ernst von Schuch conducting. Until the premiere, the working title was Ochs auf Lerchenau.[5] (The choice of the name Ochs is not accidental, as "Ochs" means "ox", which describes the Baron's manner.)
For other uses, see Der Rosenkavalier (disambiguation).Der Rosenkavalier
The opera has four main characters: the aristocratic Marschallin; her 17-year-old lover, Count Octavian Rofrano; her brutish cousin Baron Ochs; and Ochs's prospective fiancée, Sophie von Faninal, the daughter of a rich bourgeois. At the Marschallin's suggestion, Octavian acts as Ochs's Rosenkavalier by presenting a ceremonial silver rose to Sophie. But Octavian and Sophie fall in love on the spot, and soon devise a comic intrigue to extricate Sophie from her engagement, with help from the Marschallin, who then yields Octavian to Sophie.[6] Though a comic opera, the work incorporates weighty themes (particularly through the Marschallin's character arc), including infidelity, aging, sexual predation, and selflessness in love.
Der Rosenkavalier is notable for showcasing the female voice, as its protagonists (light lyric soprano Sophie, mezzo-soprano Octavian, and the mature dramatic soprano Marschallin) are written to be portrayed by women, who share several duets as well as a trio at the opera's emotional climax. Some singers have performed two or even all three of these roles over the course of their careers.
There are many recordings of the opera and it is regularly performed.[7]
Performance history[edit]
Premiere[edit]
Der Rosenkavalier premiered on 26 January 1911 in Dresden conducted by Ernst von Schuch, who had conducted the premieres of Strauss's Feuersnot, Salome and Elektra. Soprano Margarethe Siems (Strauss's first Chrysothemis) sang the Marschallin, in a turn that represented the pinnacle of her career,[12] while Minnie Nast portrayed Sophie and Eva von der Osten sang the breeches role of Octavian.
From the start, Der Rosenkavalier was nothing short of a triumph: tickets to the premiere reportedly sold out almost immediately, resulting in a financial boom for the house. Though some critics took issue with Strauss's anachronistic use of waltz music, the public embraced the opera unconditionally. Rosenkavalier became Strauss's most popular opera during his lifetime and remains a staple of operatic repertoire today.[6][12]
International success[edit]
Within two months of its premiere, the work was translated into Italian and performed at La Scala. The Italian cast, led by conductor Tullio Serafin, included Lucrezia Bori as Octavian, Ines Maria Ferraris as Sophie, and Pavel Ludikar as Ochs. The opera's Austrian premiere was given by the Vienna Court Opera on the following 8 April, under Franz Schalk's baton,[13] with Lucie Weidt as Marschallin, Gertrude Förstel as Sophie substituting for Selma Kurz,[13] Marie Gutheil-Schoder as Octavian and Richard Mayr as Ochs.[14] The work reached the Teatro Costanzi in Rome seven months later on 14 November with Egisto Tango conducting Hariclea Darclée as the Marschallin and Conchita Supervía as Octavian.[14]
The United Kingdom premiere of Der Rosenkavalier occurred at the Royal Opera House in London on 29 January 1913. Thomas Beecham conducted the performance and the cast included Margarethe Siems as the Marschallin and Caroline Hatchard as Sophie. The United States premiere took place at the Metropolitan Opera on the following 9 December in a production conducted by Alfred Hertz.[15] The cast included Frieda Hempel as the Marschallin, Margarethe Arndt-Ober as Octavian, and Anna Case as Sophie. A number of Italian theatres produced the work for the first time in the 1920s, including the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi (1921), Teatro Regio di Torino (1923), Teatro di San Carlo (1925), and the Teatro Carlo Felice (1926).[14]
Der Rosenkavalier reached Monaco on 21 March 1926 when it was performed by the Opéra de Monte-Carlo at the Salle Garnier in a French translation. The performance starred Gabrielle Ritter-Ciampi as the Marschallin and Vanni Marcoux as Faninal. 1926 also saw the premiere of a film of the opera. The French premiere of the opera itself came in 1927 at the Palais Garnier in Paris on 11 February 1927 with conductor Philippe Gaubert. The cast included Germaine Lubin as Octavian. Brussels heard the work for the first time at La Monnaie on 15 December 1927 with Clara Clairbert as Sophie.[14]
The Salzburg Festival mounted Der Rosenkavalier for the first time on 12 August 1929 in a production conducted by Clemens Krauss. The cast included Lotte Lehmann as the Marschallin and Marta Fuchs as Annina. Other first productions at notable houses, opera festivals, and music ensembles include: Teatro Massimo (5 March 1932), Philadelphia Orchestra (30 November 1934), San Francisco Opera (16 October 1940), Philadelphia Opera Company (2 December 1941), Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (2 May 1942), La Fenice (20 April 1943), Festival dei Due Mondi (19 June 1964), Teatro Comunale di Bologna (19 November 1965), Lyric Opera of Chicago (25 September 1970), and the New York City Opera (19 November 1973), among many others.[14] It was first presented in Australia as a radio broadcast on 7 January 1936, featuring Florence Austral,[16] but the first Australian stage production was not until 1972, by the Australian Opera in Melbourne, conducted by Sir Edward Downes.[17] The first New Zealand performance was at the International Festival of the Arts in Wellington in 2002.[18]
Strauss's score is written for the following:[19]
Rosenkavalier Suite[edit]
In 1945 Strauss allowed an orchestral Rosenkavalier Suite to be published, but apparently was not involved in creating it.[21] It is likely that conductor Artur Rodziński arranged it, as he conducted the suite's first performance, in October 1944 by the New York Philharmonic.[22][23]
The suite begins with the opera's orchestral prelude, depicting the Marschallin's and Octavian's night of passion (vividly portrayed by whooping horns). Next comes the appearance of Octavian as the "Rosenkavalier", depicted in tender music; the sight of him looking so young makes the Marschallin realise that he will soon leave her for a younger woman. There follows the duet between Octavian and Sophie (oboe and horn) – in which their love for each other becomes ever more obvious, but this is abruptly interrupted by the discordant music associated with Ochs's clumsy arrival. Next the violins tentatively introduce the first waltz, followed by another given out by the solo violin, before the whole orchestra settles into waltz mode. A general pause and a violin solo leads into the nostalgic music where the Marschallin sadly realises she has lost Octavian. Then comes its ecstatic climax. The work closes with a singularly robust waltz, depicting Ochs at his most pompous, and a boisterous coda newly composed for the suite.
Language[edit]
Hofmannsthal's libretto uses various forms of the German language. Members of the nobility speak in a refined and courteous mode, appropriate to the opera's 1740s setting. In more intimate circles they use a more familiar style of speech (du). For instance, the conversations between Octavian and the Marschallin in the first act use the familiar "you" but switch back and forth between more formal speech (Sie) and the familiar du,[6] as well as the intermediate (and now obsolete) Er.[24]
Some productions include a glossary in the programme to help clarify the contextual meaning of the language used, which is mostly lost in translation. Ochs makes clumsy, mannered attempts at refined or flamboyant language, using non-German words and phrases such as corpo di Bacco! ("by Bacchus's body!" in Italian), some of which he mispronounces. The language used by Octavian as Mariandel, and by other non-noble characters, is an Austrian dialect whose connotations are difficult for non-native speakers to grasp. The German used by the Italians, Valzacchi and Annina, is also very broken and marked by Italian accentuations.[6] Strauss and Hofmannsthal used dialects to depict the social status of a role in a similar way in their next opera, Ariadne auf Naxos.
In English translations, these dialects have been accounted for with varying degrees of rigor; the Chandos Highlights version, for example, uses only standard British English.[6]
Grainger's Ramble[edit]
Percy Grainger wrote an elaborate and complex piano transcription of a theme from Der Rosenkavalier. The Ramble on the Last Love Duet in Der Rosenkavalier is one of his more complex piano transcriptions, with many sumptuous ornamentations and harmonic twists and turns.
Notes
Sources