Short Summary
The beautiful Arabella doesn't want to make a commitment until she meets the right man,
"who will one day stand before her". And she does indeed find him in Mandryka: a country nobleman unspoiled by the decadent big city. But before the happy ending, a misunderstanding and Mandryka's jealousy jeopardize their relationship, which is based on great mutual love.
Storyline
Three counts are courting her, and the young officer Matteo is also in love with her. His hopes are nourished by Zdenka, who is devoted to him. She is Arabella's younger sister, but appears as a boy, as the Waldner family is unable to take two daughters to Vienna in a manner befitting their status. Arabella, however, wants to wait for the right man and shows Zdenka a strange man from the window whom she had previously met on the street and who had made a strong impression on her.
This stranger is Madryka. A letter from Waldner to his deceased uncle of the same name had summoned him to Vienna. Waldner, pressed by debts, had written to his rich friend and regimental comrade in Slavonia and enclosed a picture of Arabella. The young Mandryka and sole heir had fallen in love with the painting straight away and now asked Waldner for Arabella's hand in marriage. As he is the right man, she also gives him her word, but wants to bid farewell to her admirers from her girlhood with a final dance during the Fiakerball.
Zdenka slips the desperate Matteo an envelope containing, as she tells him, the key to Arabella's room, where she will be waiting for him that night.
Mandryka accidentally witnesses this conversation and believes that Arabella has betrayed her. In the meantime, she has returned from the ball and meets Matteo in the hotel lobby, who thinks he has just held her in his arms in her room and doesn't understand why she is now so brittle. Mandryka appears in the company of Arabella's parents and believes he has convicted her of infidelity.
But then Zdenka, recognizable as a girl, rushes over. She herself has received Matteo in the dark room and now wants to throw herself into the Danube. The shamed Mandryka, however, asks Zdenka to marry Matteo. And his happiness is also sealed: Arabella forgives him and, in accordance with the custom of her homeland, offers him a glass of pure, clear water.
Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's last joint opera Arabella is spanned between two statements by the title character: "But the right one, if there is one for me, will one day stand before me" in Act 1 and "So we are bound together in sorrow and joy and pain and forgiveness!" in Act 3. The work was originally intended to be an operetta or a second Rosenkavalier. The result is a declaration of unconditional faith in the love between two people who belong to each other - and who find each other even when all the signs initially point against it.
