Hanna Glawari, who has inherited twenty million francs from her late husband, is to be a guest at the ball – and the Pontevedrin ambassador, Baron Zeta, is scheming to ensure that she will keep her fortune in the country, saving Pontevedro from bankruptcy. The embassy in Paris of the poverty-stricken Balkan principality of Pontevedro is holding a ball to celebrate the birthday of the sovereign, the Grand Duke. Parisians and Pontevedrins, musicians and servants Hanna Glawari, a wealthy widow (title role)Ĭount Danilo Danilovitsch, First Secretary of the Pontevedrin embassy and Hanna's former loverĬamille, Count de Rosillon, French attaché to the embassy, the Baroness's admirer Louis Treumann and Mizzi Günther on the frontpage of a piano–vocal score, 1906 Roles, voice types, premiere cast Role The Vienna Philharmonic performed the overture at Lehár's 70th birthday concert in April 1940. The operetta originally had no overture Lehár wrote one for the 400th performance, but it is rarely used in productions of the operetta, as the original short introduction is preferred. The production was also toured in Austria in 1906. It was a major success (after a couple of shaky weeks at the box-office), receiving good reviews and running for 483 performances. Original production ĭie Lustige Witwe was first performed at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 30 December 1905, with Günther as Hanna, Treumann as Danilo, Siegmund Natzler as Baron Zeta and Annie Wünsch as Valencienne. The piece was given little rehearsal time on stage before its premiere. During the rehearsal period, the theatre lost faith in the score and asked Lehár to withdraw it, but he refused. Both stars were so enthusiastic about the piece that they supplemented the theatre's low-budget production by paying for their own lavish costumes. They had starred as the romantic couple in other operettas in Vienna, including a production of Der Opernball and a previous Léon and Lehár success, Der Rastelbinder (1902). The theatre engaged Mizzi Günther and Louis Treumann for the leading roles. The score of Die Lustige Witwe was finished in a matter of months. Although Léon doubted that Lehár could invoke an authentic Parisian atmosphere, he was soon enchanted by Lehar's first number for the piece, a bubbly galop melody for "Dummer, dummer Reitersmann". Lehár had worked with Léon and Stein on Der Göttergatte the previous year. The theatre's staff next suggested that Franz Lehár might compose the piece. He composed a draft of the score, but it was unsatisfactory, and he gladly left the project. They asked Richard Heuberger to compose the music, as he had a previous hit at the Theater an der Wien with a Parisian-themed piece, Der Opernball (1898). In addition, the widow admits to an affair to protect the Baron's wife, and the Count's haven is changed to the Parisian restaurant and nightclub Maxim's. The two adapted the play as a libretto and updated the setting to contemporary Paris, expanding the plot to reference an earlier relationship between the widow (this time a countrywoman) and the Count, and moving the native land from a dour German province to a colourful little Balkan state. He suggested this to one of his writing collaborators, Viktor Léon and to the manager of the Theater an der Wien, who was eager to produce the piece. In early 1905, Viennese librettist Leo Stein came across the play and thought it would make a good operetta. The play was soon adapted into German as Der Gesandschafts-Attaché (1862) and was given several successful productions. In 1861, Henri Meilhac premiered a comic play in Paris, L'attaché d'ambassade ( The Embassy Attaché), in which the Parisian ambassador of a poor German grand duchy, Baron Scharpf, schemes to arrange a marriage between his country's richest widow (a French woman) and a Count to keep her money at home, thus preventing economic disaster in the duchy.
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