Csárdás from Ritter Pásmán, Op. 441

Program notes

About the Work

Johann Strauss wrote many operettas and a single opera. Ritter Pásmán (Knight Pásmán), a comic opera in three acts, had its first performance at the Vienna Court Opera on New Year’s Day 1892. The libretto, by Ludwig Dóczi, is based on a narrative poem by the Hungarian poet János Arany. Its plot turns on a kiss: a hunter kisses the knight’s wife on the forehead, the jealous Pásmán goes to the king to demand redress, and the king reveals that the hunter was himself, so that Pásmán is granted a kiss from the queen in return.

Vienna had awaited the premiere with great curiosity, since this was Strauss’s first opera. The result was a disappointment. The reviews blamed the banal libretto, and the opera did not last long on the stage. Even the critics who disliked the piece, though, found things to praise in the orchestration, and in particular in the Csárdás. The orchestra’s listing gives it under the opera’s English title, Knight Pazman, and its opus number, 441.

What to Listen For

The story is set in Hungary, and here Strauss writes in the Hungarian national style. A csárdás is a Hungarian dance in two parts, the first slow, the second fast, and that is the plan to listen for here: a slow opening section, then a quick dance.

It is worth comparing with the Ravel just heard. Tzigane follows the same slow-to-fast pattern, a generation later and from a greater distance.