Schedule

Comedy for music by Richard Strauss

A morning in Vienna: Field Marshal Princess Werdenberg wakes up after a romantic night with her young lover Octavian. But the fleeting magic of the moment vanishes as soon as it has begun. Everyday life, society and the order of things catch up with her. Her self-satisfied cousin Baron Ochs bursts in and asks her to find him a messenger for his planned engagement. On a whim, the marshal suggests Octavian of all people. When he later presents the young Sophie with the silver rose, the moment becomes a revelation: two people meet and everything shifts. Future, expectation, love.

Behind this elegant comedy of masquerades and social ceremonial, a painfully beautiful reflection on the transience of time unfolds. The Marschallin knows that nothing is permanent: not youth, not love, not the splendour of an era. She senses how life is changing while she is still trying to hold on to it.

Thus, "Der Rosenkavalier" tells of the impossible and the irretrievable, and it is precisely in this that a special realisation can be found: life only gains depth through what we are prepared to let go of.

Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal create a world that begins to melt from its own excess. In their music, the moment expands until it becomes timeless - like the essence of a love that fades and yet remains like the scent of a rose.

Musical direction: Marcus Merkel
Staging: Markus Dietze