It was quite a shock to take down from my library shelf Joseph Kerman’s esteemed study Opera as Drama (1956) and be reminded that an opera I love did not pass muster. For Kerman, Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier consists of “four finicky hours of leitmotives, modulations, and program-musical wit.” He writes that “the opening tableau is already so enervated in sentiment that the relationship between Octavian and the Marschallin seems as unappetizing as their affectionate nicknames” and that “the scene of the presentation of the rose has all the solidity of a fifty-cent valentine.” Moreover, Kerman concludes, “no one who has understood The Marriage of Figaro could ever have taken Der Rosenkavalier seriously, unless it was Strauss and Hofmannsthal, and even that is not certain.”

Strange—all throughout 1999, the fiftieth anniversary year of the death of Richard Strauss ...

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