 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.