Ferry Gruber

An operetta with music by Johann Strauss II. However, he did not see the premiere. Wiener Blut is set at the time of the Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815, an international conference that sought to settle Europe after the upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars, and follows a traditional operetta plot full of mistaken identities. Count Balduin Zedlau, ambassador of the tiny court of Reuss-Schleiz-Greiz, is posted to Vienna. Count Zedlau is married but a real Don Juan always looking for a new encounter. Many of Strauss' compositions are used in the operetta although he did not specifically composed them for the operetta.

The operetta is one of the greatest stage works by Johann Strauss. It combines the lively waltz melodies of the golden Viennese operetta era with the fiery Csárdás sounds of Hungarian folk music. In 1954, Arthur Rabenalt filmed the operetta with Paul Hörbiger and Margit Saad in the main roles: A small village in the Puszt. A young refugee son advertises the hand of his daughter at his neighbour, a pig breeder, and even fulfils the demand for a noble title, as the gypsies living on his property have raised him to a gypsy baron. But then he falls in love with a young gypsy.

Performances from Pamela Coburn, Brigitte Fassbaender, Janet Perry, Eberhard Wachter, the Choir und Ballet der Bayerischen Staatsoper, and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Rosalinde, wife of Eisenstein, is having an affair with Alfred. Eisenstein is due to begin a prison sentence the next morning, and the prison governor, Frank, is expected to collect him at any moment. However, Eisenstein allows himself to be talked into attending a fancy dress ball by Dr Falke, and when Frank arrives to find Alfred with Rosalinde, he assumes him to be Eisenstein and carts him off to prison.