Als flotter Geist (Der Zigeunerbaron)

Der Zigeunerbaron reached the Theater an der Wien on 24 October 1885, the evening before Strauss's sixtieth birthday. Mór Jókai's story Sáffi supplied the plot; Ignaz Schnitzer wrote the German text after Jókai declined to do it himself. Strauss worked on the score for about two years, longer than on any other of his stage pieces, and pushed the operetta toward opera — extended finales, a Hungarian colouring drawn from verbunkos rhythms, a chorus used dramatically rather than as decoration. The work travelled across Europe within a season and has stayed in the repertoire ever since.