Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose) is a 206-minute studio album of Richard Strauss's opera, performed by a cast led by Jules Bastin, José Carreras, Derek Hammond-Stroud, Evelyn Lear, Frederica von Stade, and Ruth Welting with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Edo de Waart.

[3][4] The cover of Philips's CD release of the album, designed under the art direction of Ton Friesen, features a photograph by Hans Morren of a rose silver-plated by Juwelier Fischer of Vienna.

[2] William Mann reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in August 1977, comparing it with rival versions conducted by Herbert von Karajan[5] and Georg Solti.

Dramatically, she was equally effective in every chapter of Octavian's story – her outburst of anger with the Marschallin was "explosive", her banter with Sophie "perfectly delightful", her feigned inebriation as Mariandel "lovely to hear as well as comic".

Ruth Welting was guilty of a few vocal lapses too, perpetrating the occasional "flutter" above the stave, but her Sophie managed to be self-assertive while remaining "sweetly girlish".

He deserved praise for his "attack and savory resonance, his smooth cantabile and his ripe enunciation of the text", though Solti's Manfred Jungwirth was both more accurate and funnier in his handling of Ochs's peasant idiolect.

De Waart sometimes set a pace that was too slow – in Ochs's climactic routing or in the duet "Mit Ihren Augen voll von Tränen", for instance – but his preludes were incandescent and his tempi in general "suitable and spirited".

Pre-eminent among its singers was Frederica von Stade, he wrote, "an Octavian credible in all the guises of her mercurial role, who sings bewitchingly and whose warm, creamy tone soars above the staff with radiant ease".

As Ochs, Jules Bastin made up for his "limitations in range and resonance" by singing with a legato stylishness and by entirely submerging his Belgian identity into that of the Viennese baron.

The album as a whole was a fluent, conscientious, theatrically informed reading that deserved to be applauded, but it did not quite come up to the extraordinary standard set by Georg Solti's version on Decca[6][8] J.

Although Edo de Waart "caught the youthfulness of the score with infectious zest", the weaknesses in his cast meant that his recording was no better than "a mixed pleasure"[9] Alan Blyth reviewed the album on CD in Gramophone in December 1994.

Evelyn Lear's reading of the Marschallin, although evidently the product of much reflection, was spoiled by a lack of emotional profundity and a voice that was unappealingly "worn and unfocused".

The best performances in the minor roles came from José Carreras, in the high summer of his career, delivering an Italian Tenor of "outgoing élan", and Derek Hammond-Stroud as a convincing fusspot of a Faninal.

Evelyn Lear's Marschallin had "grace and gentle good humour", although not the sumptuous timbre needed to make the most of the role's moments of greatest sublimity.

It was an advantage to Jules Bastin that his timbre was as baritonal as it was: where deeper basses muddied Baron Ochs's music in a "pitch-obscuring rumble", his lighter tone enabled listeners to enjoy a "flood of character details from his considerable theatrical imagination".