In the Spotlight
Professor Wendy Heller

Several decades ago, The New Yorker published a cartoon by Edward Frascino, picturing a man lying in bed with a thermometer in his mouth.  “I know the doctor said it only a bad cold,” the patient quips to his wife, “but in case he’s mistaken I’d like to hear side 8 of ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ one last time.”  Frascino’s cartoon not only takes us back to that distant moment in which we listened to opera on “sides” of LPs, he also reminded New Yorker readers of the opera’s stunning conclusion, in particular the final trio sung by the Marschellin, Octavian, and Sophie, in which the older woman graciously relinquishes her lover to a girl his own age.  Just six years after the shocking premier of Salome, Strauss and his librettist Hoffmanmsthal had produced a frothy, playful, and nostaglic glance backwards at the ancien régime and Mozartean opera buffa.  My talk will explore the mixture of lyricism, comedy, and melancholy that infuses this extraordinary work in which Strauss, much like the Marschellin herself, seems to lament the passage of time. 

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