About the work
Richard Strauss's three-act lyric comedy, his final collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, was premiered in 1933 at the Königliches Opernhaus Dresden. Hofmannsthal had died suddenly in 1929 while still making revisions; Strauss set the libretto as Hofmannsthal had left it, refusing to alter anything. The opera is set in Vienna in 1860 among the declining aristocracy and has often been compared to Der Rosenkavalier in mood, though with an autumnal rather than nostalgic tone.
Plot
The impoverished Count Waldner plans to marry his daughter Arabella to a wealthy suitor. Her sister Zdenka, forced to live as a boy named Zdenko because the family cannot afford two daughters in society, is herself in love with the young officer Matteo. When the rich landowner Mandryka arrives from Croatia, he recognises Arabella from a photograph and courts her. A series of comic misunderstandings, love tests, and an impersonation in the dark lead to the revelation of Zdenka's true sex and the formal engagement of Arabella and Mandryka. She offers him a glass of water as a Croatian betrothal ritual.
Cultural significance
Arabella is the most overlooked of the major Strauss-Hofmannsthal collaborations but remains a staple of German-language opera houses. The final water-drinking scene is one of the most tender closings in all opera. The title role is a signature part for great Strauss sopranos, from Lisa della Casa through Kiri Te Kanawa and Renée Fleming. Productions by Götz Friedrich and Christof Loy have explored the work's fin-de-siècle anxieties about class, gender, and economic precarity.