Discuss the approach you are going to do in learning the piece and how to research the literary

background of the repertoire given to you and your duet partner.

ABOUT ROMANTIC & 20TH CENTURY MUSIC 

IN (WHAT COUNTRY?)

ABOUT FRANZ LEHAR

Franz Lehár (30 April 1870 – 24 October 1948) was an Austro-Hungarian composer. He is
mainly known for his operettas, of which the most successful and best known is The Merry
Widow (Die lustige Witwe)– but he also wrote sonatas, symphonic poems and marches. He also
composed a number of waltzes (the most popular being Gold und Silber, composed for Princess
Pauline von Metternich's "Gold and Silver" Ball, January 1902), some of which were drawn from
his famous operettas. Individual songs from some of the operettas have become standards,
notably "Vilja" from The Merry Widow and "You Are My Heart's Delight" ("Dein ist mein
ganzes Herz") from The Land of Smiles (Das Land des Lächelns). His most ambitious work,
Giuditta in 1934 is closer to opera than to operetta. It contains the ever popular "Meine Lippen,
sie küssen so heiß" ("On my lips every kiss is like wine").[3]

Lehár was also associated with the operatic tenor Richard Tauber, who sang in many of his
operettas, beginning with a revival of his 1910 operetta Zigeunerliebe in 1920 and then Frasquita
[de] in 1922, in which Lehár once again found a suitable post-war style. Lehár made a brief
appearance in the 1930 film adaptation The Land of Smiles starring Tauber. Between 1925 and
1934 he wrote six operettas specifically for Tauber's voice. By 1935 he decided to form his own
publishing house, Glocken-Verlag (Publishing House of the Bells), to maximize his personal
control over performance rights to his works.

ABOUT THE OPERETTA, DIE LUSTIGE SCHWEIGEN

The Merry Widow had an obstacle-filled route to success. The librettists and theatre producer
first had the opera set by Austrian composer Richard Heuberger, whose operetta Der Opernball
(1898) was quite popular at the time. Léon and Stein found Heuberger’s music for The Merry
Widow unsatisfactory, and they turned to the theatre for suggestions. The secretary of the
Theater an der Wien suggested Lehár, who had not previously composed this kind of comic
operetta. The skeptical librettists asked Lehár to compose an aria from the work as an audition,
and they were pleased with the result. The theatre’s manager, however, was not happy with the
finished operetta. Nonetheless, the production went forward. The initial performances earned
some criticism, but within a few years the operetta had become an international hit.

The libretto – at the beginning was a stolen story

The two librettists took the story from Meilhac’s “L’attaché d’ambassade,” but alienated it just
enough to avoid paying royalties, which later led to a lawsuit. They unceremoniously transported
the location of the plot from Germany to Montenegro. But they had not expected the authorities
to intervene, because by court order they were forbidden to make fun of Montenegro – a country
belonging to the Austrian Imperial Royal multi-ethnic state . Léon and Stein now made a joke of
it and named the operetta state “Pontevedro”. The ambassador was now called “Zeta” (after
Montenegro’s largest river), the male lead was called Danilo (after the Crown Prince of
Montenegro) and the factotum Niegus was christened after the Montenegrin royal family
Petrovic-Njegos. The list is not yet complete and and every listener knew then which country
was meant.

ABOUT THE PIECE