1/ Otto Edelmann, noted 1950s exponent of Baron Ochs, DER ROSENKAVALIER’s comic villain, was once asked whether you have to be as coarse as Ochs to play him. He said “No, you just have to be Viennese: it’s our [munipical] nation anthem!”
https://twitter.com/MetOpera/status/1320487557457678336
2/ ROSENKAVALIER (title translated, if at all, as The Knight of the Silver Rose) is about toney Viennese ppl (+ Ochs: Viennese but not toney) with “naughtiness... high in the catalogue of grave sins” (Brideshead to the rescue, again) yet endearing in spite of that.
3/ About the hero, 17yo Count Octavian Rofrano, usually sung as here by a mezzo (sometimes even by a soprano), an envious person cd ask just how much action one young Count can get under the Imperial Nookie Equity Act (that’s in Justinian, rt?), since the Act 1 curtain rises...
4/ on an aubade betw him and a 30+ princess also called the “Marschallin” bc her husband is a Field Marshall. The plot tl:dr - knowing he will leave her some day, she sends him as Knight of the Silver Rose to present this engagement gift from Baron Ochs to Ochs’s..
5/ teenage intended, Sophie - and the result is, Octavian and Sophie fall in love, Sophie rejects Ochs, Octavian & Sophie become engaged, & the Marschallin smoothes their way to do this. - There are two moments in the last act that fans wait for: 1. the ethereal...
6/ trio between Octavian, the Marschallin, & Sophie. 2. when Sophie’s father, Mr. von Faninal, says to the Marschallin after Oct & Soph have scampered off, “That’s the way with young people, isn’t it” and she says, “Yes, yes.”
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