Act I
Relayed from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Richard Strauss describes his opera, The Rose Cavalier, as a comedy for music. To the ordinary listener it is much the easiest of all his works to understand and enjoy. There is nothing abstruse or unkindly in it, and the waltz tunes in which it abounds make it plain how rich a vein of natural melody is his to draw upon when he chooses.
The opera is based on an old custom of a bygone age; a suitor used to arrange for a suitable messenger to carry a silver rose to his lady-love in token of his devotion.
At the beginning of the first Act, the young Count Octavian is paying his devotions to the Princess, wife of a Field-Marshal who is away at the wars. The lady is touched by the boy's devotion, but feels that she is too old to retain his affection, and has made up her mind that she must give him up. They are interrupted by the arrival of the Baron Ochs, and Octavian hides, and disguises himself as a girl. When he emerges, the Baron is greatly taken with him, and there is much by-play between them, when the Princess is not looking. The object of the Baron's visit was to ask his kinswoman, the Princess, to choose for him a cavalier to carry his rose to the lady of his heart, and when she has sent him away, the Princess tells Octavian that he must undertake the task. The idea pleases him so much that in leaving, he forgets to take a tender farewell of the lady, to her evident chagrin.