Schlagobers

Sweets are something wonderful! A tantalising tingling on the lips, a delicate melting on the tongue, a fantastic taste explosion on the palate. Barely have I swallowed it down before I feel possessed by a feeling of lightness and well-being. I feel strong, powerful and … happy! A childhood dream of spending the whole day in a paradise of sweets some time – feasting unrestrainedly, bathing in whipped cream and dancing wildly with seductive pralines, brightly coloured boiled sweets and all of their companions … Sweet things make me happy! Don't they?

"I cannot bear the tragedy of our time. I want to give pleasure. I need it." Shortly after the end of the First World War, theatrical life in the defeated countries of Germany and Austria had lost much of its former humour, and dealt almost exclusively with the expiation of war guilt. Richard Strauss, Director of the Vienna State Opera from 1919 onward, rebelled strongly against this tendency and, after completing such deeply psychological works as "Josephslegende" (1914) and "Die Frau ohne Schatten" (1919), composed specifically at this time, "Schlagobers" (Austrian for "Whipped Cream"), a truly culinary divertissement ballet that revels in the "good old days" and takes its audience into a fairy-tale world in which Christmas crackers dance ländlers, polkas and waltzes with Christmas stollen, Gugelhupf cakes and doughnuts and in which the love of sweet things is even more over-the-top than the opulence of the land of milk and honey in the "Nutcracker". However, at the premier in the Vienna State Opera on 9 May 1924, the audience were only able to see the "Cheerful Viennese Ballet in two acts, op. 70" as a cynical commentary on the times. To mark Richard Strauss’s 150th birthday, Karl Alfred Schreiner and his company dig out this orgy of cream in ballet form again and bring it with great pleasure into the present!