A Study Of Richard Strauss's Opera Der Rosenkavalier

Der Rosenkavalier was the first product of the really cooperation of Richard Strauss, the trail-blazing composer at the turn of the 20th century, and Hofmannsthal, the celebrated Austrian poet. It has been Strauss's best loved work since its premiere, and been recognized as a signature work of the composer and an operatic classic.This thesis has six chapters in all. It seeks to review the background and the process of the creation of Der Rosenkavalier in the first chapter. In the second chapter, it analysies and comments on the synopsis and the critical paragraphs in each act of the opera; and then explores the origin of the libretto with reference to the literary source , the sources of the story and that of the main characters in the third chapter. Coming next, it examines the opera's three characters Marschallin, Ochs and Octavian in the fourth chapter. In the fifth, it highlights the musical and dramatic features of the opera from such perspectives as formalistic integrity, style influence, structural elaboration, leitmotiv, and orchestration. Particularly, both the composer and the librettist tended to bring in this opera a consummation of their expertise that they had hitherto developed. Apart from the analysis of the libretto and the dramatic and musical features in chapters three and five, the author further discusses the underlying significance of these features in the last chapter and discusses from a macroscopic view what the opera means to the composer, to the history of operas and to the 20th century music.