The first screen adaptation of Richard Strauss’s famous opera KNIGHT OF THE ROSE, based on the libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is set in mid-18th century Vienna. While her husband, Field Marshal Prince Werdenberg, is away at war, the Princess begins an affair with the much younger Octavian. Their secret is nearly exposed when her cousin, Baron Ochs von Lerchenau, makes an unexpected visit. Octavian escapes detection by disguising himself as a chambermaid. Eager to find a match for her financially troubled cousin, the Princess arranges a meeting between Baron Ochs and the young, affluent Sophie. Octavian is chosen to serve as the baron’s formal matchmaker—the “Rosenkavalier” (rose bearer) of the film’s title. But Octavian and Sophie fall in love, and tensions erupt because Baron Ochs insists that the engagement proceed, Octavian devises a clever ruse that unleashes a cascade of errors, deceptions, and unexpected twists and turns.
KNIGHT OF THE ROSE was a collaborative cinematic effort by director Robert Wiene (THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI), librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and composer Richard Strauss, who reimagined his celebrated opera score as a purely instrumental soundtrack and composed several new passages specifically for the film. The movie opened to great acclaim on January 10, 1926, at the Semperoper in Dresden—the very opera house where the stage version had celebrated its premiere fifteen years earlier, conducted by Strauss himself.
Though the final scenes of the film were long considered lost, Filmarchiv Austria reconstructed the missing material in the early 2000s using still photographs and explanatory intertitles. In 2006—eighty years after its original debut—the completed version was once again triumphantly screened at the Semperoper in Dresden.
The music of Richard Strauss, in a version restored by Tom Kemp, will be performed live by the Metropolis Orchester Berlin.
