Music by George Posford
Book and lyrics by Eric Maschwitz
Additional material by Harold Purcell and Sidney Box
Radio version by Alastair Scott Johnston
Introduced by John Palmer

Throughout the long hot midsummer days of 1914 Vienna danced, sang. played, and loved as it had done for decades past, sublimely ignoring the small but significant warnings of the cataclysm that was almost upon it.
Count Max Schmettoff, in love with the flower girl Greta, was to be formally betrothed, by Imperial command, to the Emperor's niece, the Countess Helga. He refused, and created a major scandal. But who, in 1914, could possibly foresee the imminent end to an Imperial writ so rooted in history?
BBC Chorus
BBC Concert Orchestra leader Arthur Leavins conducted by Stanford Robinson
Produced by Alastair Scott Johnston and David Rayvern Allen