In May 1911, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) conducted his latest opera, Der Rosenkavalier, in Budapest, a mere three months after its Dresden premiere. This musical comedy enjoyed an immense success in Hungary as it did wherever it was performed. Its remarkable popularity in Hungary during Strauss’s lifetime is demonstrated by the statistics: it received nearly one hundred performances in Budapest, while Salomé had a mere fifty eight. The secret of its success was the duality which can be continually sensed in this opera buffa which seems historically misplaced: the traditional comedic structuring of the action with its typical French comedy figures and the continuous presence of death and the changing times in the background of the work. It is sufficient to recall Marschallin’s words during her morning combing: "Time is a strange thing. Some times I awake at night and adjust all the clocks in the house." Also there is the Viennese atmosphere of the music which unmistakably evokes the world of waltzes. A few years before the outbreak of the First World War, waltzes already belonged to the past of the imperial city and had become a poignant musical symbol for nostalgia for the most glorious past era of the Monarchy.

For Richard Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the atmosphere of the golden era of the Monarchy also meant their youth. Just as in recollections where different planes of time can slide into one another , they mix different times, styles, real and fictitious personalities and habits kaleidoscopically in their opera. Hofmannsthal "Vienna-fied" English and French Baroque-Rococo figures, placing them in the milieu of Marie Therese’s era. By the same token, it was pure imagination that gave birth to the courting ceremony, the handing over of the silver rose and indeed, the term of the "Rosenkavalier" itself. Historically, the waltz which became a general fashion only in the late 1820s, does not belong to the Vienna of Marie Therese. The first act is a unique paraphrase of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro: we can draw parallels between the Countess and the slightly freer Marschallin, and Cherubin with Octavian. In the second act, typical Moličre characters assume the lead roles, Baron Ochs who is a representative of the defunct village gentry, and Faninal, the father of Sophie, with his no holds barred upward mobility. In the third act, as Baron Ochs steps into the trap, making himself ridiculous, we can sense perhaps the prototype of Falstaff.

In 1945, after many decades of audience adulation, Strauss elected to rework some scenes from the opera and thus form an independent orchestral suite. The Rosenkavalier Suite presents an imposing cross-section of the music with its "oil and melted butter" smoothness. The first movement takes the entrance of Octavian the Rosenkavalier and the ensuing duet with Sophie. In the second movement, Strauss sets Baron Ochs’s waltz. The third movement is the tenor aria from the first act. The fourth movement presents the breakfast scene from Act 1, while in the fifth, we hear Marschallin, Octavian and Sophie’s trio. In the final movement, the closing duet between Sophie and Octavian brings the suite to a good natured finish.