Overture to the operetta Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron)

Program notes

About the Work

After the enormous success of Die Fledermaus in 1874, Johann Strauss II struggled for a decade to repeat it. His second lasting hit came from Hungary. His wife Adele introduced him to Saffi, a story by the Hungarian writer Mór Jókai, and in 1883 Strauss met Jókai, who was delighted with the idea of an operetta and suggested the librettist Ignaz Schnitzer.

The story is set in eighteenth-century Hungary. Sándor Barinkay returns from exile to reclaim his family estates and falls in love with Saffi, a Gypsy girl who turns out to be the daughter of a Turkish pasha and the heir to a buried treasure. Strauss wrote music of unusual weight for the genre, and Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) is sometimes described as closer to comic opera than to operetta. Its score is full of Hungarian colour.

Strauss took his time, and the piece was not finished until the autumn of 1885. The premiere, conducted by the composer at the Theater an der Wien in October 1885, was a triumph, and the operetta soon became an international success. During Strauss’s lifetime only Die Fledermaus was more popular.

What to Listen For

The overture is a medley of the operetta’s best tunes, in the manner of a Viennese potpourri. It moves between Hungarian and Viennese moods: dark, chromatic themes and the fiery accelerations of the csárdás on one side, lilting waltz melodies on the other, above all the tune of the famous Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz). Listen for the colourful orchestration that gives the Hungarian passages their flavour, and for the way Strauss builds the final pages into a whirlwind of speed and brilliance, a fitting close to a New Year’s Eve programme.