‘Der Bürger als Edelmann’ is the German title of a play by Molière and an orchestral suite by Richard Strauss. The original French play is called ‘Le bourgeois gentilhomme’ and is about a wealthy merchant who would like to become a nobleman. The play was first performed in 1670 with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Strauss composed his orchestral suite in 1919 based on the music he had written between 1911 and 1917 for an adaptation of the piece by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The suite consists of nine ...