The book Silver Vienna is divided into two parts, focusing on Viennese waltzes and operettas.

The nineteenth century was the golden age of Viennese music, best represented by waltzes. Known as “the father of waltzes,” Johan Strauss I had innate gift for creating brilliant music and he initiated the Viennese style of waltz. His son and “the king of waltzes,” Johan Strauss II, pushed the waltz to new artistic heights.

The second heyday of Viennese music took place in what was called the “Silver Era.” In the mid-nineteenth century, Jacques Offenbach introduced Vienna to French opera, which inspired Strauss the younger to write the series of operettas that served as the foundation for the Viennese operetta style. Later, the Viennese operetta was the preferred style of a number of musical stars, but Franz Lehár, called “the king of operettas,” shone brightest. Other important composers included Carl Zeller, Oscar Straus, Leo Fall, and Emmerich Kálmán.

This publication introduces the exciting lives and classic waltzes of these composers. The Vienna of Mozart and Schubert was not the true Vienna; they located their music outside of Vienna, but waltzes and operettas became part of nineteenth-century folk customs in Vienna and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and they came to represent Viennese music.