Der Rosenkavalier

In the organizer's words:

Opera by Richard Strauss
Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Things are smug, erotic, elegant and melancholy in Vienna: a field marshal's young lover causes her to have second thoughts. A bon vivant who believes he can exchange fresh meat and money for his aristocratic name is expelled from his seat. A young man of distinction moves from one great love to another and a young daughter from a newly rich family still believes in the one and only. It's all a sham, full of waltz music - with a dash of biting irony and yet full of truth. Everything comes across as Hugo von Hofmannsthal said: "You have to hide the depth. Where? On the surface."
What Strauss and Hofmannsthal achieved with Der Rosenkavalier was nothing less than one of the greatest successes in opera history. In the year of its premiere in 1911 alone, over 20 European theaters performed the work. The authors' ingredients were as simple as they were clever: A Vienna milieu of the Rococo period with mistaken identities, love affairs, intrigue and melancholy world-weariness.
Hofmannsthal's text repeatedly refers to the Viennese idiom of the time and, almost incidentally, to a deeper level of meaning. Strauss, on the other hand, alludes to the historical styles of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Strauss and bel canto. Despite all the anachronism, however, every verse and every bar is unmistakably Strauss and Hofmannsthal - overwhelming, fast-paced and full of situation comedy. And in the end, you have to agree with Baron Ochs, who says: "Don't stop being amazed."