About the work
Blindekuh (Blind Man's Buff) is a three-act operetta by Johann Strauss II to a libretto by Rudolf Kneisel. Strauss conducted the premiere on 18 December 1878 at the Theater an der Wien.
Plot
A debt-ridden landowner plans to marry off his daughter from his first marriage to a wealthy American cousin to rescue finances ruined by his second wife's extravagance. When the daughter's actual sweetheart arrives first and is mistaken for the cousin, a chain of confusions follows that even has him pursued as a murder suspect, until everything is resolved.
Cultural significance
Strauss composed the work in the immediate aftermath of his first wife's death in April 1878 and resumed after remarrying seven weeks later; twelve musical numbers were lost in a move and had to be rewritten. Despite favourable reviews and lavish staging, the operetta became the least successful of all Strauss's stage works, running for only sixteen performances, and remained largely forgotten until a Naxos recording revived it in 2019.