Theatre
Der Rosenkavalier
Hugo von Hofmannsthal · 1911
Opening lines
Octavian
Wie du warst! Wie du bist!
Das weiß niemand, das ahnt keiner!
How you were! How you are!
No one knows it, no one suspects!
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from projekt-gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In the Vienna of Maria Theresa, a thirty-two-year-old princess knows that she will have to give up her seventeen-year-old lover to someone younger than herself. When he is charged with carrying the silver rose of betrothal to the bride-to-be of a boorish country squire, he falls in love with the young girl.
Context
The work was born of a desire for comedy after the darkness of Salome and Elektra. Hofmannsthal settled the plot with Count Harry Kessler, to whom the libretto is dedicated, wrote the first act in February and March 1909 and finished the text in the spring of 1910. He borrows from a libertine novel by Louvet de Couvray and a farce by Molière. The custom of the metal rose carried to the bride-to-be, given out as an old Viennese usage, is an entire invention. Alfred Roller designed sets and costumes, recorded with the staging in a very precise prompt book. The premiere took place in Dresden on 26 January 1911.
Who it is for
A comic libretto in three acts, which can be read on its own. A bilingual edition is preferable: the language mixes Viennese dialect, court German and French turns of phrase of the aristocracy.
Prizes and reception
An immediate success, to the point that special trains took the public from Berlin to Dresden; it has remained the most popular of its composer's operas.
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