Gräfin Mariza (Countess Mariza) -

Komm, Zigany

Kálmán settled in Vienna after the encouraging reception of his first operetta - Tatárjárá in the original Hungarian, Ein Herbstmanöver in the German version - at the Theater an der Wien in 1909. He remained in Vienna until the Anschluss thirty years later, writing a string of operetta successes, including above all Die Csárdásfürstin (The Gypsy Princess or The Csárdás Princess) in 1915 and Gräfin Mariza (Countess Mariza) in 1924. Most of them are set in Hungary, like Gräfin Mariza, or include important Hungarian episodes so that Kálmán could legitimately indulge his love of Hungarian-gypsy music which, following the precedent set by Johann II in Der Zigeunerbaron, he contrived to combine with the required proportion of Viennese waltzes.

One of the attractions of the Hungarian country house owned by Countess Mariza, where Count Tassilo Endrödy-Wittemberg is working incognito as a bailiff, is its gypsy band. It is to the gypsy band, after the Countess has offended him, that Tassilo addresses his nostalgic and highly melodious “Komm’ Zigány,” urging the gypsies in their own idiom to cheer him up. They respond with a lively csárdás, to which he performs an appropriately lively dance - so exciting the admiration of the Countess and initiating the process by which, after many mishaps, they finally get married.