Aschenbroedel

Aschenbroedel
Choreographer	Emil Graeb
Music	Johann Strauss II Josef Bayer
Premiere	2 May 1901 Berlin
Original ballet company	Berlin's Royal Opera
Type	classical ballet

Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) is a ballet written by Johann Strauss II. He had written all the principal parts of the ballet, and was intending to fill in the orchestration as time permitted. However, Strauss died in 1899, and it was finished by composer Josef Bayer in 1900.

The idea for Strauss to write a ballet came from Rudolf Lothar, editor of the influential magazine Die Waage (The Weighing Scales). This occurred after the music and dance critic Eduard Hanslick, having been encouraged by Strauss' impressive Act 3 ballet score in his only opera Ritter Pásmán, suggested that Strauss should write a full-score ballet. On 5 March 1898, a contest was organised in order to decide a proper scenario for Strauss' new ballet. The panel of judges consists of Hanslick; Gustav Mahler, the controversial conductor and composer who at the time also directed the Vienna Court Opera (including its ballet company); patron Nikolaus Dumba; Strauss himself, and Rudolf Lothar.

Finally, it was decided (after receiving over 700 entries) that the winner was a certain A. Kollmann from Salzburg. The prize money was even effected through a lawyer representative and there were even rumors circulated that Kollmann was a pseudonym and that he may even be a member of the royalty in Emperor Franz Josef's court.

Strauss was not particularly impressed with the scenario set in a modern department store, although he set to work almost immediately. He worked at his pace and refused to be rushed, and by the winter of 1898, he had completed the Act 1 and was able to perform small parts of the orchestral version on the piano. By the time Strauss died in Vienna on 3 June 1899, the work lay unfinished, although sketches of the entire work were already done.

Josef Bayer duly completed the work in 1900 and presented the score to Gustav Mahler for future production at the Vienna Court Opera. Mahler refused to appraise the score, doubting the originality of the work, as Bayer himself was also a ballet composer, and when shown the original score in Strauss' writing, he claimed that he could not care for the music. Many persistent rumors suggested that he was not interested in ballet at all and only concentrated on full-scale opera works. This has been disputed by the fact that Mahler himself was eager to obtain the rights to stage Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty ballet and that due to the lack of budget, he was not able to stage Cinderella as envisioned in the scenario.

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