Overture (Die Csárdásfürstin)

Kálmán wrote Die Csárdásfürstin during the first years of the First World War, to a libretto by Leo Stein and Béla Jenbach, and it opened at the Johann Strauss-Theater in Vienna on 17 November 1915, with the empire it depicts already coming apart. The plot turns on the distance between a Budapest cabaret singer and the aristocratic family that will not receive her. Hungarian csárdás rhythms are set against Viennese waltz throughout. The piece travelled fast to Budapest and Berlin and then further, under a series of other titles — The Gipsy Princess, Princesse Czardas, The Riviera Girl.