Denigrating myths about women abound, but one of the most enduring is the myth that aging women must graciously renounce sexual love, leaving it to the young.

Let’s look at one work, Richard Strauss’s 1911 comic opera, “Der Rosenkavalier,” that peddles this lie to enduring popular acclaim, and then at a far superior work, Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” which undermines the stereotype and illuminates some special attributes, even advantages, of sexual love between the aging.

“Der Rosenkavalier,” or “The Knight of the Rose,” seems to be daring because few works deal extensively with the theme of love and sexuality in an aging woman. The opera’s erotic opening, which finds the Marschallin, a 32-year-old, unhappily married aristocrat, in bed with the teenage boy Octavian right after an episode of sexual pleasure boldly depicted by the orchestra during the overture, suggests that we will now have a serious exploration of the theme of female aging.

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