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Der Rosenkavalier

on March 30, 2019
This is the page for the performance on March 30, 2019.
If you would like to attend a performance of this production, you will find further dates below.
Music Richard Strauss → Komödie für Musik in drei Akten

Future dates

30. March 2024
Saturday
18.00 - 22.15
2 intermissions
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Cast 30.03.2019

Conductor Adam Fischer
Director Otto Schenk
Set design Rudolf Heinrich
Costume Design Erni Kniepert
Feldmarschallin Adrianne Pieczonka
Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau Wolfgang Bankl
Octavian Stephanie Houtzeel
Sophie Chen Reiss
Faninal Markus Eiche
Leitmetzerin Caroline Wenborne
Valzacchi Benedikt Kobel
Annina Ulrike Helzel
Polizeikommissar Alexandru Moisiuc
Haushofmeister bei der Marschallin Wolfram Igor Derntl
Haushofmeister bei Faninal Peter Jelosits
Notar Marcus Pelz
Sänger Benjamin Bruns
Modistin Mariam Battistelli
Wirt Jörg Schneider

Details

SHORT SUMMARY

The Marschallin has spent a night with her young lover Octavian. The morning get-together is disturbed by Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau. He asks the Marschallin for a suitable candidate to deliver a silver rose to his young bride Sophie, daughter of the newly ennobled, rich Lord of Faninal. The Marschallin proposes Octavian. Melancholically, she muses on the transience of life. With a »light heart and light hands« she wants to let Octavian go...
When he meets Sophie, he falls in love with her. Sophie, who does not want to marry the unattractive Ochs, feels the same for Octavian. But only after a trap has been set for Baron Ochs and he has become unacceptable as a future husband, does Sophie and Octavian's love happiness seem assured. Especially since the Marschallin remains true to herself and, albeit with a heavy heart, lets Octavian go.


Program booklet (2,50€)



SYNOPSIS

The Marschallin’s bedroom. The morning sunlight is gradually dispelling the memories of a night of love, and Count Octavian is just taking his leave of the Marschallin when a commotion outside heralds the arrival of an uninvited guest. lt can’t be the Marschallin’s husband because he is miles away shooting bears. It is a distant cousin of the Marschallin’s Baron Ochs auf Lerche- nau, and he refuses to be put off by the Marschallin’s servants. Octavian had lost no time in making himself scarce, and now reappears dressed as a girl. The Marschallin tells Ochs it is her maid Mariandl, and Ochs, who is by no means fastidious in these matters, finds her bewitching. But for the time being he has more important matters to attend to: he is hoping to marry the daughter of the newly ennobled and wealthy nobleman von Faninal, and has come to ask the Marschallin to recommend him someone to act as the bearer of the silver rose which custom decrees a nobleman must send his bride. On a sudden impulse the Marschallin suggests Octavian. Now it is the Marschallin’s hour for receiving callers, and all sorts of people come crowd- ing into her boudoir – people who have something to sell, peo- ple with a grievance, the usual intriguers, and a lawyer, who is promptly collared by Ochs. While the Marschallin is dressing and having her hair done, an Italian tenor performs. But after they have all gone she sinks into a reverie: she knows the way of the world and is well aware that one day she will lose Octavian. And when Octavian, now back in his own clothes, comes to take his leave she is still in a pensive mood, but Octavian is too young to understand. He departs, and the Marschallin leaves her at- tempt to call him back till too late. So the silver rose has to be sent round to him.


Noble von Faninal’s house is a hive of activity: the bearer of the silver rose is expected at any moment, to be followed later by Baron Ochs himself; a great honour for the nouveau riche Faninal, who hopes his daughter’s marriage will smooth his entrée into high society. For his daughter Sophie, very young and ingénue, it is the great day of her life. And when the radiant Octavian appears with the silver rose Sophie is walking on air, only to be brought down to earth with a bump by the arrival of the uncouth Ochs, who immediately puts himself out of court with his boorish innuendos. Of all this Ochs himself is bliss- fully unaware: it never occurs to him that what Sophie thinks is of any importance, let alone the pretentious Faninal. Left alone for a time, Octavian and Sophie realise that it is a case of love at first sight, but their tête-à-tête is brusquely interrupted by Valzacchi and Annina, a scheming pair in the Baron’s pay. Ochs is fetched, but at first makes light of the matter: it is only when Octavian manages to blurt out that Sophie refuses to marry Ochs for the simple reason that she doesn’t like him that Ochs is moved to draw his sword and in the ensuing fight receives a scratch an the arm from Octavian’s blade. Ochs makes a tre- mendous fuss, as if he were bleeding to death, but after being tended to by his minions soon recovers his old self-confidence, especially when Annina brings him a note signed Mariandl suggesting a rendezvous at a local inn.


On the instructions of Valzacchi and Annina, who have now gone over to Octavian because Ochs didn’t pay them, the staff of the local inn are busy preparing a private room for Ochs’ dis- comfiture. No sooner have their plans been given a final run- through than Ochs appears with Mariandl. In high spirits Ochs leads her to their table and wastes little time before getting down to some crude advances. Now the well-laid plans are brought into operation: weird faces pop up through trap doors and win- dows, and Annina appears in widow’s weeds with a bevy of chil- dren who dance round Ochs crying “Papa, Papa!” In desperation Ochs calls the police, but this only makes matters worse: what is Ochs doing here, asks the Commissioner, with Mariandl, who is under age? Ochs’ feeble excuses cut no ice with Faninal either. Meanwhile Mariandl takes the Commissioner aside and revals her identity. At last Ochs perceives the uncanny resemblance between Octavian and Mariandl, and when the arrival of the Marschallin puts an end to the questioning he understands a lot more beside. The best thing he can do is get away as quickly as possible. And now it is as the Marschallin said it would be: with dignity and magnanimity she gives Octavian up and slips out unnoticed by the radiantly happy Octavian and Sophie.



BACKGROUND INFORMATION

With Rosenkavalier, which premiered in 1911, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal succeeded in creating unique moments in opera history: from the monologues of the Marschallin to the presentation of the roses to the transfigured final trio. The color of an invented Theresian Vienna was not so much intended to invite sentimental retrospection as to allow a glimpse into the kaleidoscope of human, even fractured, worlds of feeling. In Vienna, Der Rosenkavalier is part of the central repertoire, to which the great interpreters at the conductor's podium have always devoted themselves. This can be seen, for example, in the current production, which premiered in 1968 under Leonard Bernstein. 

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