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Denigrating myths about girls abound, however one of the crucial enduring is the parable that growing old girls should graciously surrender sexual love, leaving it to the younger.
Let’s take a look at one work, Richard Strauss’s 1911 comedian opera, “Der Rosenkavalier,” that peddles this misinform enduring in style acclaim, after which at a far superior work, Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” which undermines the stereotype and illuminates some particular attributes, even benefits, of sexual love between the growing old.
“Der Rosenkavalier,” or “The Knight of the Rose,” appears to be daring as a result of few works deal extensively with the theme of affection and sexuality in an growing old girl. The opera’s erotic opening, which finds the Marschallin, a 32-year-old, unhappily married aristocrat, in mattress with the teenage boy Octavian proper after an episode of sexual pleasure boldly depicted by the orchestra through the overture, suggests that we are going to now have a severe exploration of the theme of feminine growing old.
Because the drama unfolds, and the Marschallin accepts the necessity for her to surrender Octavian so {that a} girl his personal age can have him, she ruminates in a bittersweet monologue on the necessity to yield to the inevitable march of time, forgoing bodily ardour. Amongst commentators, these ruminations have been thought-about profound, and it was certainly Strauss’s intention to depict the Marschallin as a sensible girl, reflecting the usual for what girls ought to be and do as they age.
The Marschallin does have one good line about growing old, on the finish of her well-known Act I aria: “And within the ‘how’ — there lies the entire distinction.” There’s one thing good concerning the musical setting of that line, too — it ends not ponderously however calmly, suspended within the air, and one could even sing it with a trill of laughter.
And but. The primary lie of Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal — the one I’ll name “the apparent lie” — considerations inevitability. For ladies, based on the opera, getting previous means give up and renunciation. The Marschallin’s life, as she ages, should find yourself as sexless because the convent lady’s life from which it emerged. Audiences usually swallow the lie and applaud her sage retreat. Strauss performs a double sport: He positive aspects a fame for daring by broaching the weird theme, and but he comforts his viewers by saying one thing totally typical about it.
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