Die Fledermaus (The Bat)
From the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1990: This effervescent operetta is a perennial favourite and John Cox’s production was a glittering setting for Dame Joan Sutherland’s farewell to The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She received a standing ovation when she appeared as one of the guests in the party scene, together with Luciano Pavarotti and Marilyn Horne. “The gala was surrounded by a really first-rate performance of Fledermaus” (London Evening Standard), with Richard Bonynge conducting a fine cast, including Nancy Gustafson, Louis Otey and Jochen Kowalski.
Die Csárdásfürstin
Emmerich Kálman (1882-1953) ranks next to Franz Lehár as one of the leading representatives of the “Silver Era” of the operetta, which was stamped above all by the works of the Austro-Hungarian cultural sphere, and which followed the classical period of the Viennese operetta. Kálmán’s “Herbstmanöver”, premiered at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna in 1908, immediately confirmed the young composer’s talent for this genre. The roots of the phenomenal originality of his melodies lie in his love of Hungarian gypsy music and his natural affinity for the Viennese waltz tradition, which characterize such musically original, international successes as the operettas “The Czardas Princess” (1915) and “Countess Maritza” (1924). Kálmán emigrated to America in 1939 but returned to Europe after the War and died in Paris on 30 October 1953. Beginning in the 1920s, he increasingly incorporated elements of modern dance music into his stage works. Particularly worthy of mention among his other successful works are “Die Bajadere” (1921), “The Circus Princess” (1926) and “Das Veilchen vom Montmartre” (1930).
Wiener Blut
Johann Strauss Jr., known as the “Waltz King”, surpasses all other composers in the history of the operetta with regards to musical inventiveness. With the sparkling temperament and winning charm characteristic of his works, this genial musician brought world fame to the Viennese waltz and made spectacular contributions to the field of operetta. “Vienna Blood” was Strauss’s last work, which he left incomplete at his death. However, thanks to Adolf Müller’s brilliant arrangement, this work has become a fully accepted Strauss operetta, inspired by the brightest of Vienna-waltz spirits and delighting anew at every performance through its wealth of captivating melodies.
Die lustige Witwe
The idea of a festival on the Neusiedler Lake in Mörbisch (in Austria’s province of Burgenland) was born in the summer of 1955; two years later, after a stage had been erected in the Mörbish Cove, Johann Strauss’s “Gypsy Baron” opened the first season of the “Seefestspiele”. The festival’s repertory is dominated by the works of the “Golden” and “Silver” Viennese operetta, from Johann Strauss to Ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz. Lehár’s most famous operetta, “The Merry Widow”, was given its world premiere on 30 December 1905 in Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. It has been translated into 25 languages and played over 250,000 times around the world. It has been played everywhere, including – according to a 1910 newspaper report – on the Zambesi in the heart of colonial Africa. When it came out in New York and Chicago in 1907, it set off a veritable “Merry Widow” craze, spawning cigarettes, cocktails, hats etc.
Die Fledermaus (The Bat)
The corks pop and the champagne flows in this sparkling production of Johann Strauss’s world-famous operetta with the ensemble of the Bavarian State Opera. Carlos Kleiber conducts Strauss’s music with a temperament, vigor and sensuality that bring to mind contemporary reports on Johann Strauss’s own conducting style: “His whole body was conducting – the hands, head, eyes, torso and feet of the master”. But Kleiber can also invoke another inspired model and predecessor for his interpretation: in 1894, Gustav Mahler conducted the work at the Hamburg Stadttheater, lavishing his usual care and precision on it and paving its way into the repertoire of all major opera houses.
Das Land des Lächelns
Franz Lehár (1870-1948) was incontestably one of the foremost masters of the operetta. He abounded in creative ideas, was a supreme craftsman, a temperamental musician whose artistry flowed in his blood, and a dramatist who succeeded in breathing genuine life into the hackneyed figures of the operetta genre. His most popular operettas were premiered between 1925 and 1929. These were the works whose wealth of ideas and emotionally florid, sometimes even sentimental, melodies brought them greater fame than the brilliant early works such as “The Count of Luxembourg” (1909) and “Gypsy Love” (1910) – save for “The Merry Widow” (1905), his most popular operetta of all. The works of this second creative period were also conceived with one particular singer in mind: Richard Tauber. The most typical works of this period are “Paganini” (1925), “The Czarevitch” (1927), “Friederike” (1928) and “Das Land des Lächelns” (1929). Among Lehár’s later operettas, “Das Land des Lächelns” has been particularly successful. It revels in color and rhythmic liveliness and the peculiar harmonies and melodies echo the exoticism of the Chinese setting.
Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gipsy Baron)
Next to “Die Fledermaus”, “The Gypsy Baron” is Johann Strauss’s most popular operetta. The libretto gave Strauss the chance to revel in such contrasting musical forms as the csárdás and the Viennese waltz. The style of the lied forms and ensembles is so original and finely balanced that the “Gypsy Baron” can truly be called a comic opera. Among the leading names of the stellar cast are Wolfgang Brendel, Ivan Rebroff, Janet Perry, Ellen Shade, Martha Mödl and, in his debut role, Siegfried Jerusalem as Sándor Barinkay.
Der Graf von Luxemburg
With its charmingly romantic theme, effective stage action and abundance of spirited and delicate moods, this Parisian-flavorerd libretto gave Maestro Lehár every opportunity to display his talent. Lehár completed this operetta in only three weeks in 1909 and at first referred to it himself as “a slovenly piece of work”. Once again, however, impulsiveness and spontaneity proved to be the ingredients of an outright success. “The Count of Luxembourg” is – with regard to its inventiveness, originality and instrumental coloring – on a par with Lehár’s other international successes.
Zigeunerliebe
Franz Lehár (1870-1948) found remarkably expressive and brilliantly colorful sounds for the drama and romantic moods of this unique topic. The style was decisively influenced by the familiar cadence of Hungarian gypsy music in the composer’s native country. This is not only evidenced by the csárdás rhythms or the inclusion of the cymbalom in the arrangement, but above all by the many pronouncedly melancholy hues of the melody and harmony produced by the use of minor keys. After “The Merry Widow” and “The Count of Luxembourg”, “Gipsy Love” is Franz Lehár’s third most successful operetta. After its triumphant Vienna premiere in 1910, it was performed, for example, at the Empire Theater in Darjeeling, at the foot of the Himalayas! The location shots in our production were filmed in Austria’s Helenental and Vienna Woods.