THE GYPSY BARON

Comic operetta by Johann Strauss The first premiere of the new season, and part of the Dresden State Operetta’s Johann Strauss series, is a reencounter with a true classic: “The Gypsy Baron.” First staged at Vienna’s “Theater an der Wien” in 1885 as a follow-up piece to “A Night in Venice,” it quickly became one of the composer’s most beloved and frequently performed works. Following the successful rediscovery of “Prince Methusalem” (1877) last season, the Dresden State Operetta now continues its focus on one of operetta’s founding figures. In no other work did the composer come so close to his dream of writing a comic opera. “The Gypsy Baron” is truly a stylistic juxtaposition of comic opera and operetta, unparalleled in the Viennese Waltz King’s ouvre. Strauss skillfully contrasts his two love-smitten leads and their lyrical duets with the pig-breeder Zuspán, one of the genre’s most enduring characters. Strauss’s “Gypsy Baron” is the story of an unconventional love prevailing over social barriers. Sándor Barinkay, exiled because of the crimes of his father, an alleged embezzler, has been roaming the world since his father’s death. Now rehabilitated, Barinkay returns to his family’s decaying estate, much to the chagrin of many locals. Pig farmer Zuspán has meanwhile occupied the property, and is by no means willing to give up the land without a fight. Barinkay begins courting Zuspán’s daughter Arsena in order to avoid a boundary dispute. Arsena says he must be a baron, no less, to be worthy of her hand in marriage, a condition he thinks he has met when the Gypsies living on his property recognize him as their lord. But all he earns is her contempt. A defiant Barinkay thus marries the Gypsy girl Saffi. When it turns out that she’s actually the daughter of a prince and her relations to Barinkay do not befit her station, their marriage looks doomed to failure. Barinkay goes off to war. Two years pass until the two meet again, in Vienna once the war is over…