Polish Blood

thumb|A premiere of Polenblut, Vienna, 1913 thumb|A 1914 Czech production of Polská krev Polenblut (English: Polish Blood) is a German-language operetta in three scenes by Czech composer Oskar Nedbal with a libretto by Austrian playwright Leo Stein. It is allegedly loosely based on the short story "Mistress into Maid" (also known as "The Squire's Daughter") from The Belkin Tales by Russian author Alexander Pushkin; although Stein himself did not say this. It was one of the most popular operettas in Eastern Europe during World War I, but anti-German sentiment prevented the opera from finding a place on stages elsewhere other than in the United States where it was performed in a heavily modified adaptation under the name The Peasant Girl.

==Performance history== Polenblut premiered in Vienna at the Carltheater on 25 October 1913. The original cast included Karl Pfann as Count Boleslaw Baranski, Mizzi Zwerenz as Helena, Richard Waldemar as Pan Jan Zarembá, Kathe Ehren as Wanda, and Josef König as Popiel. It ran for a long time in Vienna; reaching its 250th performance on 26 January 1916 and continuing on past that.