Carlotta Waltz

Millöcker was one of the pioneers who - following the initiative taken by Carl von Suppé before Johann Strauss took control of the situation - established a home-grown repertoire of operetta to compete with the Offenbach imports that had threatened to monopolise the Viennese market. His most successful work was Der Bettelstudent (The Beggar Student) but he is remembered too for Gasparone, a story of banditry and high romance set in Sicily and first performed at the centre of Viennese operetta, the Theater an der Wien, in 1884. Named after the heroine of Gasparone, the widowed Carlotta Countess of Santa Croce - who is all the more attractive for the fortune she is about to inherit - the Carlotta Waltz is a medley of the operetta’s best waltz tunes.