About the work
Die Bajadere is an operetta in three acts by Emmerich Kálmán with a libretto by Julius Brammer and Alfred Grünwald, premiered on 23 December 1921 at Vienna's Carltheater. Kálmán himself considered it the closest of his stage works to opera.
Plot
Indian prince Radjami wagers that he can win the celebrated Paris singer Odette Darimonde within weeks and courts her with supposedly hypnotic roses; Odette sees through the scheme and rejects him, until a feigned departure for India finally brings the two together.
Cultural significance
Kálmán blended Viennese waltz with the fashionable American shimmy and exotic orchestral colours, capturing the taste of the early 1920s; today Die Bajadere stands in the shadow of his better-known operettas and is rarely performed.