Gasparone:

Dunkelrote Rosen (Dark-red roses)

Carlotta Waltz

When Millöcker’s Gasparone - the eleventh of his eighteen operettas - was first performed in Vienna in 1884 it had no Dunkelrote Rosen. In fact, it acquired the song only in 1933, thirty-four years after the composer’s death, when both the libretto and the score were re-written for a production in Berlin. The song is by Millöcker, however: it was cannibalised from another, by then forgotten operetta of his called Der Vice-Admiral and although it was conceived for a quite different context - with no relevance at all to the original Gasparone story of banditry, smuggling, kidnap and high romance in Sicily in the 1820s - it was an instant hit in its new surroundings. Since then there have been several new versions of Gasparone but few if any of them have failed to include Dunkelrote Rosen, the sentimental melodiousness of which is just too effective to omit.

The Carlotta Waltz is another favourite. 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 - it amounts to a medley of the operetta’s best waltz tunes.