About the work
Operetta by Paul Abraham, originally composed as '3:1 a szerelem javára' to a Hungarian libretto by Imre Harmath, Dezső Kellér and László Szilágyi and premiered on 18 December 1936 at Budapest's Király Színház. Alfred Grünwald and Hans Weigel's German-language adaptation, which turned the water-polo plot into a football story, followed on 25 March 1937 at Vienna's Theater an der Wien.
Plot
A Hungarian sports team celebrates a tournament win in London; Gingi, an Englishwoman fleeing an arranged marriage, is smuggled into Hungary disguised as a man. Entanglements with her father, a baron and the team members surround her budding love for player Gyurka, until a decisive match resolves matters.
Cultural significance
The title alludes to the 'Wunderteam', Austria's celebrated national football side of the early 1930s. After its 1937 Vienna premiere the work disappeared from the stage owing to the persecution of its Jewish composer; a wave of rediscovery has brought it back to German-language stages since the 2010s, in cities such as Dortmund, Augsburg and Berlin.