A full account of the making, during1909-10, of Der Rosenkavalier, with
emphasis on its derivation from a French operette of 1907, L'Ingenu
libertin.
A full account of the making, during 1909-10, of Der Rosenkavalier with
emphasis on its derivation from a French operette of 1907, L'Ingenu
libertin, which was seen in Paris by Count Harry Kessler and which
formed the basis of the opera then to be written by Hofmannsthal and
Strauss. Previous scholarship has credited the narrative and characters
of Der Rosenkavalier to much older French sources known to and studied
by Hofmannsthal, butthis book shows clearly how every element in
L'Ingenu libertin is in fact taken (and transformed) by Kessler and
Hofmannsthal into the work that made fortunes for Hofmannsthal and
Strauss, but left Kessler on the sidelines.
Michael Reynolds casts a major new light on Strauss's most popular
operatic success, highlighting in particular how it was that
Hofmannsthal - who had not until then had any theatrical success as an
original playwright - wasadvised and empowered by Kessler to produce a
work that succeeded onstage from its very first performance and went
rapidly on to conquer the stages of the world.
Michael Reynolds is an established writer on opera, a translator and an
online music critic, an interest that he sustained throughout thirty
years in the world of international diplomacy. His previous book for
Boydell, About Suffolk, was an anthology of writing about his
adoptedcounty.
