HEUBERGER: Der Opernball (The Opera Ball)

In this work, Richard Heuberger (1850-1914) tried to create a new operetta style, the "comedy operetta". He eschewed spectacular costumes and choruses, sentimentality and drama by picking up where Offenbach had left off in La vie parisienne and Strauss in Die Fledermaus. According to the great Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, he succeeded in "preserving the purity of the Viennese operetta.