The Gypsy Baron (German: Der Zigeunerbaron) is an operetta in three acts by Johann Strauss II which premiered at the Theater an der Wien on 24 October 1885. Its libretto was by the author Ignaz Schnitzer (de) and in turn was based on Sáffi by Mór Jókai. During the composer's lifetime, the operetta enjoyed great success, second only to the popularity of Die Fledermaus. The scoring and the nature of Strauss's music have also led many music critics to consider this work a comic opera or a lyric opera.
Ralf Benatzkys immensely popular operetta Im weissen Rossl premiered in Germany in 1930, followed by London the following year and Paris in the latter half of the decade. It made it to the US where it played under another name on the Great White Way. This echt-Austrian work had first been popularized as a play shortly before the turn of the 20th c. This 2008 staging was celebrated as a reference performance for future attempts. Directed by Rolf Langenfass and conducted by Rudolf Bibl, the cast includes Harald Serafin as the Austro-Hungarian head-of-state Kaiser Franz Joseph II.
Ralf Benatzkys immensely popular operetta Im weissen Rossl premiered in Germany in 1930, followed by London the following year and Paris in the latter half of the decade. It made it to the US where it played under another name on the Great White Way. This echt-Austrian work had first been popularized as a play shortly before the turn of the 20th c. This 2008 staging was celebrated as a reference performance for future attempts. Directed by Rolf Langenfass and conducted by Rudolf Bibl, the cast includes Harald Serafin as the Austro-Hungarian head-of-state Kaiser Franz Joseph II.
Dagmar Schellenberger, Nikolai Schukoff, Harald Serafin, and Mirjana Irosch star in this production of the Kalman operetta with Rudolf Bibl conducting the Festival Orchestra Moerbisch.
In the year 1968, the “Bockerer” has decided, after many attempts, to marry his long-time widowed housekeeper, Anna. Gustl, whom he as taken in like a son after the war, will open a butchery in the Czech small town Kostelec and invites the Bockerers to spend their wedding journey with him and his Elena. The “Prague Spring”, of which everywhere is talked so much about, promises a nice honeymoon, and their friend Hatzinger is taken along on the journey as well. Soon after their arrival, the Bockerer has to realize that “Communism with a human face” is still an idle wish.
