Concert in Hamburg

Johann Strauss II
A Masked Ball, Quadrille on Themes from Verdi’s Opera «Un ballo in masquera»
op. 272 (1862)

The opera «Un ballo in maschera» with the music by Giuseppe Verdi, was first performed on February 17, 1859, at the Teatro Apollo in Rome. Only the plot itself—which involved a royal assassination—was objected to, not the score by the composer, who was already widely recognized as a master of modern Italian opera. However, there were still reservations about Verdi’s music in Vienna, even in the early 1860s. Naturally, opera-goers in the imperial city on the Danube were eagerly awaiting an encounter with Verdi's musical adaptation of this controversial opera, which had been hailed as sensational in international reports following the premiere in Rome and subsequent performances.
But they had to wait until April 1, 1864, when a «stagione» presented the first performance of Un ballo in maschera in Italian at the Imperial-Royal Court Opera Theater next to the Kärntner Gate. The Viennese critics received both the work and its performance without enthusiasm. Thus, the first German-language performance of A Masked Ball at the Kärntnerthortheater

in Vienna did not take place until November 19, 1866.
Johann Strauss II did not wait for these developments. For many years he had been a staunch advocate for Giuseppe Verdi’s works, both in Vienna and in St. Petersburg. He quickly embraced the practice, already established in Joseph Lanner's and his father’s time, of incorporating the most significant motifs from a new, noteworthy work into his orchestra’s repertoire. In the case of «Un ballo in maschera», he followed the Russian premiere of the work in December 1861 and, by April 26/May 8, 1862, had already presented a quadrille based on themes from Verdi’s opera to the musicians of his orchestra in Pavlovsk. Since Johann Strauss II interrupted his activities in July 1862 to marry Jetty Treffz and go on a honeymoon to Italy, the Viennese audience had to wait until a concert by the brothers Strauss on December 21, 1862, in the Imperial-Royal Volksgarten to hear the new quadrille, which still bore the Italian title «Un ballo in maschera».

Translation: Dr. Michael L. Bock

DE 日
本
語 EN

≡ Menue ≡ Close