Aschenbrödel was among the last new compositions undertaken by Johann Strauss II and was left unfinished at his death. The composer's only full-length ballet grew out of a single, well-received element in his otherwise disastrous grand opera Ritter Pasman (1892), the piece's third-act ballet. Persuaded to write a full-length dance score, the 73-year-old Strauss selected a story—adapted from Charles Perrault's fairytale "Cendrillon" (Cinderella)—from among a group of three, chosen from several hundred submissions by a panel that included Gustav Mahler. Strauss labored over the work during the second half of 1898, but at his death on June 3, 1899, only the first act and half of the third act had been orchestrated. The completion of the ballet was given to Josef Bayer, the director of ballet at the Vienna Court Opera, who was required to draw upon Strauss' existing music for his task. The completed work, with a newly rewritten scenario (which required a whole new edition of the score by Bayer), was premiered in Berlin on May 2, 1901, and went on to success in Vienna some seven years later (under Felix Weingartner), and has received performances throughout the world in the century since. The three-act piece opens with a stately Prelude featuring an exquisite call and response section for the strings and brass. The first act introduces Madame Leontine, the cruel head milliner at a department store, who neglects her stepdaughter Grete (i.e., "Cinderella") in favor of her own two daughters. Her machinations to prevent the store's young owner Gustav from meeting Grete go awry when Grete leaves work in time to attend a ball for the employees at Gustav's home. Strauss' score moves between the small-scale depictions of Grete's drab existence at the store, the villainy of her stepmother, and the bold lyrical passages that represent her desire for love and Gustav's interest in her. All of the material retains a Viennese lilt and the sweeping symphonic splendor associated with Strauss' best orchestral music—there's even an appearance by the Blue Danube Waltz played on a calliope. Act II depicts the meeting between Gustav and Grete at the ball, and Grete's humiliation by Gustav's jealous brother Franz, who unmasks her and sends her running from the mansion, leaving behind a slipper. Much of its structure is made up of waltz-time material, including a bracing, delightful, and imposing allegretto as fine as anything in Die Fledermaus, and the nine-minute Ascherbrödel-Walzer. Act III, in two parts, opens with Grete's dream after she returns to the store, in which Gustav determines she is his beloved, and her awakening to realize that it has all really happened and they are to be married. After a tentative, delicate opening to accompany her dream, this act becomes a largely festive body of music, including waltzes and sections designated Tarantella, Mazurka, and Czardas (the latter salvaged by Strauss from an unused addenda written for an 1897 production of Die Fledermaus).

© All Music Guide

Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide.
© 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide is a registered trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.