Actually I get a voyeuristic thrill from the prelude, and the fact that is then shown to be passion between two people of the same sex would get my intellectual support if nothing else (like most blokes, straight or gay, I am totally vague about what lesbians actually do.  I believe they know better than men how to press the right buttons, as it were.)

There is a marvelous passage in Humphrey Carptenter's biog of Britten in which the young Graham Johnson tells of his visit to Aldborough and unwisely made his enthusiasm for the work plain.  BB was icy.

BB: It is utterly loathsome.  I almost get sick hearing it - even the overture makes me physically sick.

GJ:But it's got so many beautiful things in it, hasn't it?

BB: What do you like about it?

GJ: Well, that trio (singing unwisely) Marie Theres', Marie Theres',

BB: (icily) I know how it goes, thank you very much, and I don't need you to sing it to me.

(Horrible silence.  Close examination of plate ware by other guest.)

Graham Johnson continues that he was near to tears at being put down by the great man, and Peter Pears tried to be nice to him and probably told BB not to be such a...

The next morning

"BB said that what he loathed about the piece was its lesbianism ... Now I am older I know what he meant.  It was not the lesbianism but Strauss' voyeuristic enjoyment of it...  There is a salaciousness in the music that sits in the sidelines and watches the Marschallin and Octavian, whereas everything Ben wrote from the deeper wells of his sexuality was absolutely self revealing."

Gosh, martle! I'm sorry it wasn't, er, a hit though.

I was trying to track this down and have finally found it but I don't know if the link will work. It looks too long and has the air of being fragile. [Oh *]

It's an extract from Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince, the bit where Bradley and Julian go to see Der Rosenkavalier at Covent Garden. Begin at the top of page 249 where there is a wonderful description of that cloying sickly feeling you get when entering the ROH auditorium. Bradley throws up part way through the opening scene when he realises that the sexual relationship portrayed on stage mirrors his own situation. (Julian is a she by the way and about 25 years younger than Bradley. Don't ask.) It's great stuff and, having read it before I ever saw Rosenkavalier in the flesh, it coloured my view of the piece ever since. 

* [Bum. That link doesn't work    But if you google 'Iris Murdoch Black Prince Rosenkavalier' it might appear. If not, er, there's an interesting bit in Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince about Rosenkavalier. In fact it permeates the whole book in an Iris Murdoch highly brainy sort of way.] 

Interesting that Janet Baker, despite wonderful reviews for her Octavian for Scottish Opera, only did the first run, and could never be persuaded to play the role again - or give an explanation why this should be: there was clearly something in it she found distasteful or unsettling.

A minority of two at worst, Reiner.

The comparison with Cherubino is very fair I reckon. Cherubino being undressed and re-dressed by two older women can certainly be a bit frisson-inducing but surely not, er like that? Not for me anyway.

The prelude on the other hand is certainly crassly Freudian and I can understand someone finding all those horn whoopings distasteful. (It's clearly a vorspiel that goes well past being just vorspiel. ) For me on the other hand they're just another in a long line of examples pretty much throughout his career of Strauss taking the peace. He does specify that that section should be exaggerated but I don't remember the exact words and don't have my score handy...

Very well put, Robert. My own view comes in somewhere between this and PW's, in so far as for me it embodies in concentrated form everything that's self-satisfied and complacent about Strauss's work, although at the same time there's its "documentary" aspect as coming from a world sliding blindly towards war (and, paralleling this, being set in the period just before the French Revolution) and the fact that it contains so much sonically and emotionally compelling music, as far as I'm concerned. The first half of act 3 is a disaster though, I think, and completely fails to serve its function as the climax of the "comedic" side of the piece. For me Strauss was a wonderfully talented musician who constantly let himself down by disdaining any real intellectual engagement with what he was doing and its relation to the rest of reality (and in so doing provided a model for large numbers of contemporary composers!).

Interesting comments there on the later Strauss operas - which (perhaps with the exception of Arabella and Capriccio) aren't that frequently performed.

It's important to remember, I think, that Strauss saw music as a trade as much as an art.  He was interested in creating commercial properties that would bring him an income - and, to this end, he kept a daily composing schedule, which I believe he observed whether he felt inspired or not.  A good habit to maintain, I think.

I'd agree that the later operas evidence less inspiration than the earlier ones (and I don't think Strauss ever really topped the achievement of Elektra, even if Ariadne is my overall favourite), yet I'm glad that we have so much from him.  I think it should be the aim of all artists - whether they be composers, writers, painters, sculptors, or whatever - to make an income from their work - yet too many seem to have a 'distate' for anything that smacks of 'business', 'money', or 'the marketplace'. 

Sorry to veer off topic there, but I get a bit riled when Strauss is criticised as 'bourgeois' and 'the composer as businessman' - so what if he was?