Countess Maritza

Operetta in two acts composed by Emmerich Kálmán (Imre Kálmán).

Libretto by Julius Brammer and Alfred Grünwald, based on Octave Feuillet’s Le Roman d’un jeune home pauvre .

Romanian version of the libretto: V. Timuş and Miltiade Păun.

The action takes place on Countess Maritza’s estate in the countryside.

ACT I

Young, beautiful and widow, Countess Maritza, courted by many admirers willing to marry her, announces an imaginary engagement to an operetta character, Koloman Zsupan (nephew of Zsupan, the pig-breeder in Johann Strauss’ “The Gypsy Baron”).

Much to her surprise, the young Koloman Zsupan appears at the engagement.

Count Tassilo of Wittenburg, in love with the beautiful Maritza, a young man determined to change his lifestyle (he had been a party man), wants to help the countess, who is actually almost bankrupt.

He gets himself employed as an administrator on her estate and he is once more charmed with her beauty.

Seeing Lisa, his sister, among the guests to the estate, makes him very happy. When finding out that Maritza is getting engaged, he sees his dreams shattered away (romanza). Hearing the romanza, Maritza asks him to repeat it, in order to entertain her guests. Tassilo refuses and he is fired.

Together with the guests, she plans her departure to the city, to Tabarin. Before she leaves, Manja appears, who guesses her fortune and tells her she will fall in love within the month. Scared, Maritza refuses to depart and reemploys her estate manager.

ACT II

With the passage of time, the countess finds a true, devoted and noble friend in Tassilo. Love is slowly making room in her heart. The entire convoy of guests, headed by Zsupan and Iotza (an elderly courtier), comes back and organizes a big party. Observing the romance of the two, Zsupan and Iotza plot an intrigue, telling Maritza they have seen the administrator kissing Lisa. Jealous, she offends and calumnies Tassilo, throwing money at him… which he takes and gives to musicians. Lisa comes closer to console her brother and thus everyone realizes the mistaken interpretation of the brother-sister relationship.

The operetta ends happily, with the pair singing their love and rejoicing, with their loved ones, for having met happiness (Hello, happiness…)

*Titus Moisescu & Miltiade Păun, Ghid de operetă, Editura Muzicală a Uniunii Compozitorilor, Bucharest, 1969