Der Zigeunerbaron. [Piano solo]

Hamburg: Aug. Cranz [PN C. 26861], 1886. Large octavo. Full dark red patterned cloth with titling gilt to spine, original publisher's dark ivory decorative upper wrapper bound in. 1f. (recto title, verso blank), [i]-viii (ouverture), 3-88 pp.

Binding slightly worn and bumped; endpapers browned and partially split; wrapper slightly soiled and stained; defective at inner margin; blank upper outer corner lacking; blank lower outer corner repaired. Slightly worn, browned, and creased. First Edition. Weinmann p. 137.

First performed in Vienna at the Theater an der Wien on 24 October 1885, with text by I. Schnitzer after M. Jókai's Saffi.

"Certainly Strauss was no judge of librettos and throughout his life he found it both cumbersome and restricting to compose to prescribed texts, though with Der Zigeunerbaron (1885) he showed himself uncharacteristically adept in this. Over the next quarter of a century a further 14 operettas and even a grand opera (Ritter Pásmán, 1892) cemented Strauss's position as the leading light in 'Silver Age' Viennese operetta, though even in the composer's lifetime only three of these found international success: Die Fledermaus (1874), Eine Nacht in Venedig (1883) and Der Zigeunerbaron." Peter Kemp in Grove Music Online.