Just as in “Orpheus in the Underworld”, this opera-travesty by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) also uses an ancient Greek subject as a means of caricaturing contemporary social and political issues. The main target of Offenbach’s barbs are the unscrupulousness and moral decline of France’s “Second Empire”. The action of the ancient saga of gods and heroes is stripped of its loftiness and parodistically reduced to an ironic display of very human motivations, weaknesses and excesses. “The ambivalence of Offenbach’s genius emerges here more clearly than in any other of his works – a genius that masters with the same skillfullness all the facets of musical expression: emotion and intellect, romance and parody.” (Bernard Grun, Cultural History of the Operetta)
Eine Nacht in Venedig
The operetta “Eine Nacht in Venedig” (A Night in Venice) was premiered in Berlin on 2 October 1883; barely a week later the Viennese were also able to celebrate the triumph of a new work by the “Waltz King.” The music of this comic opera perfectly matches the merry, carefree mood of the action. Melodies such as “Komm in die Gondel,” “Ach, wie so herrlich zu schau’n” and “Kommt, kommt, ihr holden Frauen!” are among the high points of the operetta. The stellar cast includes such eminent singers as Anton de Ridder, Sylvia Geszty, Trudeliese Schmidt and, as Ciboletta, Julia Migenes.
Gräfin Mariza
After “The Gypsy Princess”, which put him in the ranks of the most successful composers of light music, Emmerich Kálmán (1882-1953) scored another international success with “Countess Mariza” in 1924. The special appeal of this operetta lies in the inventiveness and profusion of its melodic lines. An effective combination of humor and sentimentality is reinforced by elements of Hungarian folklore, elements which give the operetta its unforgettable charm.
Der Zarewitsch
With his operetta “Der Zarewitsch” (The Czarevitch), premiered in 1927, Franz Lehár was able to repeat the success of “Paganini” (world premiere in 1925), his first large operetta created especially for Richard Tauber. Arthur Maria Rabenalt’s stylish television adaptation, with icon-covered walls, a birch forest and perhaps the most beautiful romantic duets of all of Lehár’s operettas, is not only a feast for the eyes but for the ears as well. Teresa Stratas and Wieslaw Ochman make a simply enchanting couple through their singing, appearance and acting talent.
Paganini
With “Paganini” (Vienna, 1925), his 25th stage work, Franz Lehár began an impressive new creative period that was intimately linked to his collaboration with the famous tenor Richard Tauber. The rejuvenation of Lehár’s creative powers enabled him to reach new artistic heights. The enormous success achieved by these works prove how right he was in not merely trying to make people laugh, but also to provide them with emotionally moving situations. One of the most beautiful melodies in the work is “Gern hab’ ich die Frau’n geküsst”, which summarizes Paganini’s entire world and reflects the composer’s inimitable grace and charm.
Die Fledermaus (The Bat)
Full of fizz and subtle humor, “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat) has become a staple of New Year’s Eve programming in many opera houses around the world. In this sparkling production, director Otto Schenk has freed it from the conventional bonds of the theater, broken it up into fully telegenic, whirling visual sequences, and heightened it with the tumultuous gaiety prescribed by Strauss. Act II, often a stiffly staged ball, has at last become one great hurly-burly, a huge festival, an orgy of swaying figures – drunken or otherwise intoxicated. Foremost among them are the frenzied Eberhard Wächter as Eisenstein, the delicious Renate Holm as Adele and the noble Gundula Janowitz as the long-suffering Rosalinde, who does a magnificent gypsy dance. Competing for the title of show-stealer are fabled Bayreuth tenor Wolfgang Windgassen as Prince Orlofsky and actor-director Otto Schenk himself as Frosch. Karl Böhm leads the Vienna Philharmonic and the Chorus of the Vienna State Opera in this spirited recording.
Der Opernball
Richard Heuberger (1850-1914) came from a wealthy, art-loving Graz (Austria-Hungary) family. After working as an engineer, he decided to devote himself completely to music, working as choral director of the Vienna Singakademie, composer of instrumental music, ballets, cantatas and operas, music critic and music journalist. Shortly before the turn of the century, he tried his luck with operettas. Only his first work, the delicately orchestrated, splendidly hued “Opernball” (Opera Ball) of 1898 – a beautiful and substantial echo of the Strauss era – has managed to maintain its position in the repertoire. In this work, Heuberger tried to create a new operetta style, the “comedy operetta”. He eschewed spectacular costumes and choruses, sentimentality and drama by picking up where Offenbach had left off in “La vie parisienne” and Strauss in “Die Fledermaus”. According to the great Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, he succeeded in “preserving the purity of the Viennese operetta. The ‘Opernball’ was a popular, witty piece and Heuberger accordingly avoided the effects of grand opera, both noisy passion and watered-down sentimentality.”
Die Dollarprinzessin (The Dollar Princess)
Leo Fall was born in Olmütz (Moravia) in 1873 and died in Vienna in 1925. As with Lehár, his father was the conductor of an imperial military band. Having inherited the same musical talent, he began playing the violin at the age of five – a further parallel to Lehár – and later studied at the Vienna Academy of Music. In the course of his life he worked in Berlin, where he made his debut as a conductor in 1895, Hamburg and Cologne, before returning to Vienna via Berlin. Throughout his career he worked as a conductor. It was not until his return to Vienna that he began writing operettas. His works are among the best of the Vienna operettas’s second generation. The “Dollar Princess”, written in 1907, the same year as “The Merry Peasant” (Der fidele Bauer), is one of his most successful works. The music abounds in fascinating ideas and captivates through its charm and liveliness.
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).
Giuditta
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). “Giuditta”, Lehár’s last operetta, was premiered at the Vienna State Opera in 1934 under the musical direction of the composer and with Richard Tauber in the tenor role of Octavio. Franz Lehár, who became known and revered in his later years as the King of the Silver Operetta, died in his villa in Bad Ischl, Austria, on 24 October 1948.