Thousand And One Nights, A (Tausend und eine Nacht)

Johann Strauss II launched his career as a theatre composer at Vienna’s Theater in February 1871 with the three-act Indigo and the Forty Thieves. Though a triumph for the composer, from the outset the work suffered from a weak libretto. The first night playbill named the theatre’s director, Maximillian Steiner, as librettist of the piece, but this credit masked the participation of several collaborators on the re-working of the Arabian Nights tale – swiftly earning the opera the nickname Indigo and the Forty Librettists. Over the ensuing years, repeated attempts were made to forge a permanent partnership between the music and a new libretti. The most successful of these attempts occurred in 1906. Gabor Steiner, younger son of Maximilian Steiner, commissioned the experienced librettists Leo Stein and Karl Lindau to create an entirely new version of Indigo, and further entrusted his resident conductor, Ernst Reiterer, with the adaptation of Strauss’s music. On 15 June 1906, the ‘new’ Johann Strauss operetta, Tausend und eine Nacht, was premiered – described favourably as “an oriental operetta of dream interpretation, a sumptuous ballet spectacular with songs. Under the new title, the work won the favour of the public and has achieved lasting success.

Instrumentation
2 (2 dbl picc). 2.2.2. / 4.2.3.0. / timp / perc / hp / str

Format
Lib

Publisher
JW