Eine Nacht in Venedig (A Night in Venice)

by Johann Strauß II (1825 - 1899).
Komische Oper in three acts. 1883.
Libretto by F. Zell and Richard Genée, after the libretto Château Trompette (Trumpet Castle) by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré.
First performance at the Friedrich Wilhelmstädtisches Theater, Berlin, on 3rd October 1883.

It is carnival time and Barbara, the young wife of an elderly Venetian senator, is to be taken by gondola to her aunt's at Murano, out of harm's way. Caramello, barber to the Duke of Urbino and disguised as a gondolier, plans to take her to his master, but she has another assignation and has sent in her place the fisher-girl Annina, the object of Caramello's own affections. At the Duke's palace Caramello realises his mistake and does his best to keep Annina and his master apart. All ends well enough when the Duke returns Annina to him and appoints him steward in his household.

The ninth of Strauss's operettas, Eine Nacht in Venedig (A Night in Venice), was first staged, disastrously, in Berlin, to avoid the Vienna Theater an der Wien, where his wife Lili was rumoured to be having an affair with the manager Franz Steiner, or with Steiner's father. In Berlin the famous Lagunen-Walzer (Lagoon Waltz) aroused a cats' serenade from the gallery, reflecting the original words, changed for a triumphant Vienna performance. There is an attractive overture to the work, which also allows Caramello the seductive Komm in die Gondel (Come into the gondola).