Das Spitzentuch der Königin

Das Spitzentuch der Königin (The Queen's Lace Handkerchief) is an operetta by Johann Strauss II. The libretto was by Heinrich Bohrmann-Riegen and Richard Genée and is about the Spanish writer Cervantes. Although the operetta is supposedly based on a fictitious incident in the court of Portugal in the 1500s, in fact "it's a send-up of the court of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I, with the young king in the story representing Crown Prince Rudolf, 19 years of age at the time, whose death nine years later was one of the big Habsburg family tragedies".