About the work
Opera in three acts by Ivan Zajc to a libretto by Hugo Badalić, based on Theodor Körner's drama 'Zrinys Tod'. It was first performed on 4 November 1876 at what was then Zagreb's theatre, predecessor of today's Croatian National Theatre, as the first Croatian national opera.
Plot
The opera tells of the historical ban Nikola Šubić Zrinski, who in 1566 defended the fortress of Szigetvár against the overwhelming Ottoman army of Sultan Suleiman I. Refusing to surrender despite the hopeless odds, Zrinski, together with his wife Eva and daughter Jelena, chooses to fall in a final sortie rather than give in.
Cultural significance
The opera's best-known passage is the closing chorus 'U boj, u boj!' ('To battle, to battle!'), which Zajc had composed a full decade before the rest of the score and which took on a life of its own as a patriotic song. As Croatia's first national opera, the work had reached 682 performances at Zagreb's national theatre by 2010.