Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier

“No means no!” we are told, though not for Baron Ochs von Lerchenau, who is so (nominally) aristocratic that he imagines he can get away with anything. An incorrigible womaniser, he plans to wed the daughter of an “upstart”, whose lavish dowry will pay off all his debts. But things do not quite go as planned. The “comedy for music” by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss that premiered in 1911 held up a mirror to the decadent high society of fin de siècle Europe.
The plot plays out in an imaginary Rococo Vienna and remains firmly within the tradition of Vienna’s Hanswurst-Theater that brought Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart international acclaim. Its thinly veiled social critique ranges from harsh to caustic and turns on the woefully loose manners of ladies and gentlemen of quality. Thus the curtain rises on the boudoir of Maria Theresa, Princess Werdenberg, and the wife of a field marshal no less, who is in bed with her seventeen-year-old lover Octavian, whom she fondly calls Quinquin. They are interrupted by Baron Ochs von Lerchenau, who elbows aside his cousin’s servants and barges in on her with “urgent business”.
Octavian has just enough time to slip away and disguise himself as a chambermaid. The blustering Baron is apparently looking for a “Rosenkavalier” to woo his bride-to-be on his behalf, as is only proper. The fortune that will fall to him from the only daughter of a nouveau-riche upstart will settle all his debts. Notwithstanding these marriage plans, he still makes crude passes at the Marschallin’s charming maid-servant, blissfully unaware of the havoc this ravishing creature will yet play with all his scheming...