Le bourgeois gentilhomme (in German, Der Bürger als Edelmann), Op. 60, is an orchestral suite compiled by Richard Strauss from music he wrote between 1911 and 1917. The work has a complex genesis. Originally, Strauss collaborator Hugo von Hofmannsthal had the idea of reviving Molière's 1670 play Le bourgeois gentilhomme, simplifying its plot, introducing a commedia dell'arte troupe, adding incidental music, and concluding what would be a long evening with a newly written one-act opera called Ariadne auf Naxos. This idea did materialize, as planned, in Stuttgart on 25 October 1912. But it was apparent that the result was too long and expensive and that many in the audience for the play were uninterested in the opera, and vice versa. Strauss and Hofmannsthal accordingly opted to separate the