Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár was born in Komorn, Hungary, on April 30, 1870. His father, a bandmaster, was his first music teacher. When Franz was twelve, he entered the Prague Conservatory where he remained six years specializing in the violin with Bennewitz and theory with Foerster. His studies were completed in 1888, after which he played the violin in the orchestra of the Eberfeld Opera. He subsequently became an assistant bandleader of his father’s ensemble and a director of Austria’s foremost Marine bands. In 1896 he realized his first success as a composer of operettas with Kukuschka, produced in Leipzig. In 1902 he became conductor of the Theater-an-der-Wien, in Vienna, home of operettas. There, in the same year, he had produced Viennese Women (Wiener Frauen). The operetta after that was The Gypsy (Der Rastelbinder), seen in 1902 in one of Vienna’s other theaters. With The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe), seen in 1905, Lehár achieved a triumph of such magnitude that from then on he was one of Austria’s most celebrated operetta composers (and one of the wealthiest) since Johann Strauss II. He wrote about thirty more operettas (three of them in the single year of 1909-1910). The most famous were The Count of Luxembourg (Der Graf von Luxemburg) in 1909; Gypsy Love (Zigeunerliebe) in 1910; Frasquita in 1922; Paganini in 1925; The Tsarevitch (Der Zarewitsch) in 1927; and The Land of Smiles (Das Land des Laechelns) in 1929. During World War II Lehár lived in seclusion at his villa in Bad Ischl, Austria. After the war he became embittered by the widely publicized accusation that he had been pro Nazi, arising no doubt from the well-known fact that The Merry Widow was Hitler’s favorite operetta. What was forgotten in this attack against Lehár was the fact that his wife had been classified by Nazis as non-Aryan and that on one occasion both and he and his wife were subjected by the Gestapo to house arrest. Lehár died in Bad Ischl, Austria, on October 24, 1948. He is one of the few composers to outlive the copyrights of some of his most famous works.
Lehár’s popularity in the early part of this century gave the Viennese operetta a new lease on life at a time when its heyday was believed over. It was through the influence of Lehár’s immense popularity and success that composers like Oscar Straus, Emmerich Kálmán, and Leo Fall began writing their own operettas. Lehár’s best stage works have been described as “dance operettas” because of the emphasis placed on dance music, the waltz specifically. The dance usually becomes the climax, the focal point, of the production. Stan Czech further points out that Lehár’s waltzes are “slower and sweeter than those of Johann Strauss, were definite prototypes of the modern slow waltz, and their Slav atmosphere gave them an exciting and individual character.”
The Count of Luxembourg (Der Graf von Luxemburg)—text by Willner and Robert Bodanzky—was first given in Vienna on November 12, 1909. This operetta opens in an artist’s studio in Paris where René, the impoverished Count of Luxembourg, is offered five hundred thousand francs by Prince Basil if René is willing to marry the singer Angele and let her share his title. The reason for this peculiar arrangement is that the Prince is himself in love with Angele, wants to marry her, but prefers that his wife have a title. After they get married, René and Angele discover they are in love with each other, a fact which eventually the Prince is willing to accept since he is ordered by the Czar to marry a legitimate Countess. As in most Lehár’s operettas, the high musical moment comes with a waltz—the infectious duet of René and Angele, “Bist du’s, lachendes Glueck,” which is also extremely popular in orchestral adaptations. Other appealing numbers are the second act duet, “Lieber Freund, man greift nicht” and the tenor aria, “Maedel klein, Maedel fein.”
Frasquita, produced in Vienna on May 12, 1922, is remembered most often for one of Lehár’s most beautiful vocal numbers, the nostalgic and romantic Frasquita Serenade, “Hab ein blaues Himmelbett.” Fritz Kreisler made a fine transcription for violin and piano, and Sigmund Spaeth provided the melody with American lyrics.
Gypsy Love (Zigeunerliebe), had its world première in Vienna on January 8, 1910. The librettists (Willner and Bodanzky) provided a romantic storybook setting of Rumania, and a romantic central character in the form of the gypsy violinist, Jozsi. Zorika is ineluctably drawn to Jozsi though she is actually betrothed to his half-brother, Jonel. In a dream, she gets a foretaste of what her life would be with one so irresponsible and fickle as a gypsy violinist, with the result that she is more than happy to marry Jonel. The main waltz melody (one of Lehár’s greatest) is “Nur der Liebe macht uns jung” and the most infectious Hungarian tune is Jozsi’s soaring entrance gypsy melody to the accompaniment of his violin, “Ich bin ein Zigeunerkind.”
From The Land of Smiles (Das Land des Laechelns) comes what is probably the best loved and most widely sung of all of Lehár’s vocal numbers, “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz” (“Thine Is My Heart Alone”) which opened not in Vienna but in Berlin, on October 10, 1929. This was actually a new version of an old Lehár operetta, originally called The Yellow Jacket (Die gelbe Jacke) which had been introduced in Vienna in 1923. The romantic plot of both operettas involved a Chinese diplomat, Prince Sou-Chong, and Lisa, daughter of an Austrian Count. They marry and settle in Peking in whose strange setting, Lisa’s love for the Prince soon turns to hate. With great magnanimity—even though this is in violation of ancient Chinese traditions and customs—he allows Lisa to leave him and return home.
In The Yellow Jacket, “Thine Is My Heart Alone” is sung by Lisa, and at that time this number made little impression. The famous tenor, Richard Tauber, fell in love with it, and performed it so extensively in his recitals everywhere that he and the song became inextricably identified. When Lehár revised his operetta and renamed it The Land of Smiles, he cast the song “Thine Is My Heart Alone” as a major second-act aria for Prince Sou-Chong, Richard Tauber playing the part of the Prince. The Land of Smiles was a personal triumph for Tauber who appeared in it over 2,500 times all over the world. “Thine Is My Heart Alone” became with him something of a theme song. He rarely gave a concert anywhere without singing it either on the program itself or as an encore. When The Land of Smiles was given in New York City in 1946, with Tauber as the star, the operetta was renamed Yours Is My Heart; in this production Tauber sang the song four times in four different languages, French, Italian, German, and English.
There can be little question but that The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe) is one of the most famous operettas ever written. It was a sensation when first performed, in Vienna on December 28, 1905. It came both to London and New York in 1907, a major success in both places. In Buenos Aires it was performed simultaneously in five theaters in five different languages. Since 1907 there was hardly a time when The Merry Widow was not being performed in some part of the world. It has enjoyed in excess of six thousand performances, a thousand of these in Vienna alone. On several occasions it has been adapted for the screen.
Victor Léon and Leo Stein wrote the text. This is the usual operetta material involving a beautiful heiress from a mythical kingdom. She is Sonia from Marsovia, who is leading a gay life in Paris. Beautiful and wealthy, she is inevitably sought out by the most handsome men of Paris. The government of Marsovia is eager to get her to marry one of its native sons, the dashing Prince Danilo, thereby keeping her fortune at home. As she conducts her vivacious night life she is zealously watched over by the Marsovian Ambassador, Baron Popoff, who never loses an opportunity to further the interests of Danilo. Eventually, Sonia has had her fling and is ready to settle down with the Prince.
The Merry Widow Waltz, “S’fluestern Geigen, Lippen schweigen,” an eye-filling climax to the third act, is not only the most popular excerpt from this operetta but also one of the most celebrated waltzes ever written. A secondary waltz, “Vilia” is also highly beguiling, while a third musical favorite from this score is “Da geh’ ich zu Maxim” (“The Girl at Maxim’s”).
What is one of Lehár’s best waltzes, second in popularity only to that of The Merry Widow, does not come from any operetta. It is the Gold and Silver Waltzes (Gold und Silber Waelzer), op. 79 which he wrote as a concert number.