The Emperor & the Actress: The Love Story of Emperor Franz Josef & Katharina Schratt

She was the darling of the Austrian stage, a blond "bird of paradise" with "laughing blue eyes and a little girl's face." He was one of the nineteenth century's most influential rulers, the last great Hapsburg emperor, who, years later, would plunge the world into war. She rose from a broken marriage and financial ruin to become the pampered confidante of Europe's rich and powerful. He grew hopelessly obsessed with this guileless girl from the Vienna woods, and lavished his affection—and his wealth—on her. The Emperor and the Actress is a factualaccount of the relationship between Emperor Franz Josef and Katharina Schratt, a leading lady described by one drama critic as "the average man's ideal. . .both seductress and housewife, earthy and sophisticated." This is a riveting tale of forbidden love and political intrigue, of madness and murder, of a woman's conquest of her monarch—and of the terrible sacrifices both were forced to endure. In following Katharina's progress through the theatres, palaces, and watering spots of Europe, author Joan Haslip provides an engrossing glimpse of daily life off and on the stage and at court. She resurrects the forgotten theatrical customs and luminaries of the era. And she describes—in rich detail—the world of princely opulence and sumptuous luxury enjoyed by a privileged few. The Emperor and the Actress is far more than just the story of Katharina Schratt—the toast of fin-de-siecle society, the mistress "enslaved in golden chains," a friend to Strauss, Mahler, and Brahms. It is a study of power—the power of beauty, of seduction, of tradition, of wealth, of art, of madness, and of change. And it is a haunting portrait of vanished European monarchy, the last gasp of the Hapsburgs, the excesses of absolute rule.