About the work
Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) is a ballet by Johann Strauss II, his final and unfinished work: by his death in 1899 he had orchestrated only the first act and half of the third. Ballet composer Josef Bayer completed the score under contract to use only Strauss's own music; the libretto by Albert Kollmann (writing as Carl Colbert) had earlier been chosen from 700 entries in a competition. The premiere took place on 2 May 1901 at Berlin's Royal Opera House in the presence of Kaiser Wilhelm II, choreographed by Emil Graeb.
Plot
The Cinderella tale is set in a modernised, bourgeois world: Prince Leon owns a department store, his future Cinderella works in a small workshop rather than at the domestic hearth, and a lost shoe brings the two together.
Cultural significance
Gustav Mahler refused to conduct Bayer's completed version, believing it no longer represented Strauss authentically; Vienna's Hofoper did not stage the work until 1908, as the house's first ballet production in contemporary rather than classical dancers' dress. It then largely fell into obscurity until Renato Zanella choreographed a new version for the Vienna State Opera in 1999.