The melodramatic plot of the operetta reflects one of the most prominent social life issues of that time - the conflict between a flamboyant personality and a society imbued with snobbery, between the variety artist Silva and the aristocratic elite, who despise the stage craft. As is typical of the genre, the tumultuous love story is interwoven with fun and intriguing jokes. The plot has a basis based on real facts: according to the statistical data of the time, collected since the 18th century, one has to say with a smile that in Austria-Hungary an impressive number of dukes, counts and barons were married to actresses, singers and vaudeville dancers...
One of the most famous operettas by I. Kálmán - "The Queen of Čardash" - was written in 1913, when the Viennese L.Stein and B.Jenbach offered the composer the play "Let love live". The enthusiastically started work was interrupted by the First World War - it is pointless to write a hymn to love when the cannons are thundering in Europe and the newspapers are constantly printing lists of the dead. However, after a short pause, in 1915 November 17 The premiere of "Queen of Čardash" took place at the "Johann Strauss" theater in Vienna. And after it - a triumphal march through the trenches of Europe. The operetta was staged in all theaters, even in the theaters of the warring countries on different sides of the barricades.
The first Silva Vareska was the singer Mici Giuntler. A couple of months later, Frici Masari, the prima donna of the Metropol Theater, was applauded by Berlin, 1916. Shari Fedak played Silva in Budapest, 1917. the operetta received a sensational reception in Stockholm, with Elna Gistend playing the leading role. In the same year, the operetta came to Petersburg and was staged in the "Vasaros buffa" theater. Here, due to the lost title page of the piano, "The Queen of Čardash" was named after the main character Silva, and this name of the operetta spread in many Eastern European theaters.
