About the work
Das Spitzentuch der Königin (The Queen's Lace Handkerchief) is a three-act operetta by Johann Strauss II, with a libretto by Heinrich Bohrmann-Riegen and Richard Genée. Strauss himself conducted the premiere on 1 October 1880 at the Theater an der Wien.
Plot
In sixteenth-century Portugal, a pleasure-loving king leaves governing to his regent, Count Villalobos. When the poet Cervantes is arrested for mocking Villalobos in a song, the queen, an admirer of his work, has him freed and gives him a lace handkerchief bearing an ambiguous message; Villalobos presents it to the king as proof of infidelity, until Cervantes finally brings about the royal couple's reconciliation.
Cultural significance
The piece was an instant hit in 1880, Strauss's greatest stage success to that point, partly because audiences read it as a send-up of the Viennese court around Emperor Franz Joseph and his then nineteen-year-old son, Crown Prince Rudolf — whose death at Mayerling nine years later made the operetta vanish quickly from the repertoire. Its waltz Rosen aus dem Süden, drawn from the score, has remained in circulation ever since.