Silva Varescu, a self-sufficient and professionally successful cabaret performer from Budapest, is about to embark on a tour of America. Three of her aristocratic admirers, named Edwin, Feri and Boni, prefer her to stay. Edwin, unaware that his parents have already arranged a marriage for him back home in Vienna, orders a notary to prepare a promissory note of his expected marriage to Silva within ten weeks.
Costume
Zhanna Glebova's wardrobe deserves its own zip code.
Production
Soviet TV money somehow built this entire champagne fantasy.
Director
Yan Frid
Zhanna Glebova
Сильва Вареску, певица варьете «Орфеум»
Ivars Kalnins
Эдвин фон Веллергейм
Vitali Solomin
Бони, граф Бонифаций Канчиану
Mariya Solomina
Стасси, графиня Анастасия Эгенберг
Igor Dmitriev
князь Леопольд Веллергейм, отец Эдвина
Mikhail Svetin
граф Вильгельм Эгенберг, отец Стасси
Vladimir Basov
генерал фон Ронсдорф
Marina Yurasova
дама в варьете (нет в титрах)
Yelena Solovyova
Natalya Slitskaya
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This is a Soviet television adaptation of Imre Kálmán's 1915 operetta 'Die Csárdásfürstin,' heavily sanitized for socialist audiences—notice how Silva's independence gets framed as patriotic duty rather than capitalist ambition.
Director Yan Frid was a Leningrad TV mainstay who specialized in musicals; this was his longest production at nearly 2.5 hours, reportedly because Brezhnev-era executives kept demanding more spectacle.
SU
