Ist ein Traum, kann nicht wirklich sein

Cluas Guth directs Der Rosenkavalier in Frankfurt (*****) [live]

Ida Ränzlöv (Octavian) & Elena Villalón (Sophie) © Barbara Aumüller

The premiere of Der Rosenkavalier in Dresden (1911) would remain the most successful in Richard Strauss's career. Rosenkavalier created a word-wide sensation – equalled only by the première of Puccini’s last opera Turandot in 1926. The critical response was almost uniformly hostile. In the case of Julius Korngold – Eduard Hanslick's successor at the Neue Freie Presse and one of Strauss' most hostile adversaries – one could even call it an assassination. Hofmannsthal’s ‘humourless’ libretto came in for considerable punishment, as did Strauss’s ‘superficial’ music. But audiences marched to a different tune and they marched in their thousands. So popular was Rosenkavalier that within its first year Dresden had seen over 51 performances – to say nothing of the contiguous productions mounted in Nuremberg, Munich, Basel, Hamburg, Milan, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Amsterdam – and all within ten months of the première.