Victor Léon's great talent to amuse his public shows itself as clearly here as it did in "Barfüssele". The libretto is a lively picture of the time of the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus.
Grünfeld's music is not deep, but delightfully fresh and naïve. He is master in the instrumentation of miniature art. His vivid rythms display a grace, an "entrain" and a piquancy, which remind one of Delibes and Massenet, without being imitations of these great masters.
The dances are perfectly original, full of life and fire, and the ballet in the second act is in itself a masterpiece, that will hold its own.
Besides this there are a roguish song by a goose-girl, a very pretty valse rondo, and last but not least many fine Hungarian songs.
The scene is laid in Transylvania in the year 1459.
The first act takes place in the Transylvanian village of Fogaras.
A long war has deprived the village of all its men, and the women of Fogaras are wildly lamenting their absence.
They have charged the governor ("Gespann") Paul Rosto to petition the King, to restore their husbands, and when the young schoolmaster, Augustin Paradiser, the only man in the village besides Rosto appears on the scene, they bitterly complain to him of the governor's dilatoriousness.
Augustin tries to appease them, by assuring them, that the petition was duly sent, and soon Rosto himself comes to his assistance by presenting them with the King's answer to their appeal.
His Majesty graciously agrees to the right of the women of Fogaras to claim their respective husbands, fathers and sons, the King having only borrowed them for a time.