[1] The first performance of the work was at the Academy of Music in Baltimore in March 1913, after which the show was overhauled and shortened before spending five weeks in Philadelphia and another five in Boston tryouts.

[1] The original cast included Christie MacDonald as Princess Jeanne/Sylvia, Thomas Conkey as Prince Franz, Edwin Wilson as Lieutenant Karl, Frank Belcher as Petrus Von Tromp, Tom McNaughton as Mikel Mikeloviz, Ethel Du Fre Houston as Dame Paula, and Hazel Kirk as Liane.

The cast included Bobby Clark as Mikel, Marjorie Gateson as Dame Lucy, Gloria Story as Princess Sylvia and June Knight as Liane.

[2][3] In 2002 the Ohio Light Opera commissioned a new critical edition of the operetta from Quade Winter, based on the composer's original manuscripts in the Library of Congress.

[4] Mikel Mikeloviz, disguised as a monk, transports Princess Jeanne, the infant daughter of King René of the little kingdom of Zilinia, to Bruges to wait in safety during the war.

Mikel also mistakes Liane, a milliner who has sought temporary employment in the Laundry of the White Geese, for the lost princess.