Creating Der Rosenkavalier: From Chevalier to Cavalier

Reynolds CB, Major General Michael

ISBN 10: 1783270497 / ISBN 13: 9781783270491

Published by Boydell Press, Rochester, 2016

About this Item

Signed and dedicated by author on title page. Inscription on front free end paper. Book is in Very Good condition save for minor bumps and scuffing on the hard board edges, and a few surface area scratch marks on the front and reverse board. Harry Kessler played a decisive role in creating all the theatrical elements that inspired Strauss to some unforgettable music - the meeting between Sophie and Octavian, the glorious resolution of the triangular relationship that brings the opera to its richly satisfying close. Kessler's source was an operette, long forgotten, that he had seen in Paris. He was inspired to think that the characters ad situations in this piece could be turned into something incomparably better by his friend Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and by Strauss.

Seller Inventory # 036892

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Creating Der Rosenkavalier: From Chevalier to Cavalier
• Publisher: Boydell Press, Rochester
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783270497
• ISBN 13: 9781783270491
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

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.

Table of Contents

Overture
Beginners On the page... ...and onto the stage
Act One:The Young Libertine
Act Two: Who was Harry Kessler?
Act Three in two scenes and an Epilogue: Creating Der Rosenkavalier
Scene One - devising the scenario
Scene Two - characterisation and authorship
Epilogue
Creating Der Rosenkavalier - a retrospective
Bibliography

About the Author

Major General Michael Reynolds CB joined the British Army in 1948, and was commissioned into the Queens Royal Regiment in 1950. In the course of a long and distinguished career, he served in Korea, where he was severely wounded, Northern Ireland and West Germany. On promotion to Major General he assumed command of NATO's Allied Command Europe Mobile Force (Land). In retirement, he became guest speaker on British Army and NATO battlefield tours in the Ardennes, publishing a number of detailed histories on World War 2 operations in Europe. He died in 2015.