Gräfin Mariza (Countess Mariza) is an operetta in three acts composed by Hungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán, with a libretto by Julius Brammer and Alfred Grünwald. It premiered in Vienna on 28 February 1924 at the Theater an der Wien.

As Countess Maritza, it made its New York debut at the Shubert Theatre, in an adaptation by Harry B. Smith, and with interpolated music by other composers, on 18 September 1926, playing 318 performances. Since the 1981 production by the Lubo Opera Company, however, most American productions have been straightforward English translations of the original, with Kálmán's music intact.

As Maritza, it opened in London at the Palace Theatre on 6 July 1938.

At the castle of the countess Mariza

At the terrace of a castle with an adjacent park. Countess Mariza spends a long time of her life in the city, so she trusts her rural estate to her bailiff — Count Tassilo, who is operating under the name of Török. Tassilo hopes to earn a dowry for his sister Lisa — she doesn't know about the impoverishment of the family. He rather likes his service: he has never seen his mistress, just sends her the rents, and the servants and peasants treat him well. But this idyll is to come to an end: prince Populescu, an old Don Juan, comes and announces that countess Mariza will follow to celebrate her engagement there. Suddenly, she appears: A gorgeous, lively, but also a capricious young woman, who wants to disclose and celebrate the engagement with Baron Kolomán Zsupán. All guests have already arrived, but the engagement is only a fake, she secretly confesses to a friend, to get rid of her admirers.

Mariza (Portuguese pronunciation: [mɐˈɾizɐ]), born Marisa dos Reis Nunes (16 December 1973, Lourenço Marques, Portuguese Mozambique) is a popular fado singer.

Mariza was born to a Portuguese father and a mother of partial African heritage. At age three, her family moved to Metropolitan Portugal, and she was raised in Lisbon's historic quarters of Mouraria and Alfama. While very young she began singing in a wide variety of musical styles, including gospel, soul and jazz. Her father strongly encouraged her to adopt fado; he felt that participating in the traditional music would grant her greater acceptance in the Portuguese community. Mariza has sold over 1,000,000 records worldwide.

The singer's first child was born on 6 July 2011, two months ahead of schedule. The child is the result of the relationship with businessman Anthony Ferreira.

In 1999 fado's most famous and beloved interpreter, Amália Rodrigues died. In the public remembrance and mourning that followed, fado regained much of its previous popularity, and Mariza was asked to perform a broadcast tribute to Rodrigues' memory, which caused her friends to begin urging her to record an album of fado music. She did so, and in 2001 Fado em Mim was released. It sold an astounding 100,000 copies (4,000 copies of a fado disc would have been considered successful). After this the record company made the disc available worldwide, and sales eventually topped 140,000 copies.

René Kollo (born November 20, 1937 in Berlin, Germany) is a German tenor.

He was born René Kollodzieyski in Berlin and grew up in Wyk auf Föhr. He attended a photography school in Hamburg, although he had always been interested in music, particularly conducting. He did not begin to perform (as a self-taught drummer) until the mid-50s. He played in jazz clubs and studied acting with Else Bongers in Berlin. To prepare for musical roles, he studied with Elsa Varena, who quickly recognized that he had an unusual gift.

He signed his first recording contract at 20 and recorded popular hits. He made his operatic debut in Braunschweig in 1965 in three Stravinsky one-act operas: Mavra, Renard, and Œdipus Rex. He stayed in Braunschweig for two years, singing most of the lyric tenor repertoire. In 1967, he went to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, still singing lyric roles.

In the same year, he married pop singer Dorthe Larsen and became the father of a daughter, Nathalie.

He was guest soloist in Munich, Frankfurt, Milan, and Lisbon. He began his now legendary association with Wagner and his Heldentenor roles at Bayreuth in 1969, where he sang the Helmsman in The Flying Dutchman. The major Wagnerian roles followed in quick succession: Erik in 1970, Lohengrin in 1971, Walter in 1973, Parsifal in 1975, Siegfried in 1976, Tristan and Tannhäuser in 1981. He has since sung these roles at major opera houses throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, where he was seen in Lohengrin (1976, conducted by James Levine) and Ariadne auf Naxos (1979).

Rudolf Johann Schock (September 4, 1915 – November 13, 1986) was a German tenor.

He sang a wide repertoire from operetta to Lohengrin, recording among others opera and lieder, doing television, radio and film work. Slim and handsome,^{[citation needed]} he made many films.

His voice fell almost into the heldentenor fach but was smaller and more "ingratiating" than many voices in that category. Colored distinctly with a rich baritonal quality,^{[citation needed]} Schock is described by Grove as a "lyric tenor" with a warm flexible voice, and a "strong top voice" which suited him to "heroic roles". However the same source feels that his acting left something to be desired.

When he was 18 and still continuing his musical studies that took him to Cologne, Hanover and Berlin, Schock joined the opera chorus at Theater Duisburg in the city of his birth. The Staatstheater Braunschweig cast Schock in solo roles in 1937, but his career was interrupted by his being enlisted into the army in 1940. It resumed after the war in 1945 in Hanover. In 1946, he appeared with two of the Berlin-based opera companies and in 1947 he joined the Hamburg State Opera where he was a member until 1956.

Friedrich "Fritz" Karl Otto Wunderlich (September 26, 1930 – September 17, 1966) was a German lyric tenor, famed for his singing of the Mozart repertory and Italian and German opera and lieder. He died in an accident when he was only 35. In a survey published in the BBC Music Magazine of April 2008, Wunderlich was voted the fourth greatest tenor of all time.

Fritz Wunderlich was born in Kusel in the Palatinate. His mother was a violinist and his father was a choir-master. For a short time, the family kept the inn "Emrichs Bräustübl". Fritz's father lost his job due to pressure imposed upon him by local Nazis, in addition to suffering from a severe battlefield injury. He committed suicide when Fritz was five years old.

The story regarding Wunderlich's discovery parallels many of his contemporaries (notably Nicolai Gedda and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau). As a young man Wunderlich worked in a bakery. At the insistence of neighbors and passers-by who had witnessed his musical gifts and beautiful voice, Wunderlich decided to begin studies in music. He managed to obtain a scholarship in order to pursue his studies at the Freiburg Music Academy where he studied French horn and voice.