The Count of Luxembourg
| Operetta dates | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Count of Luxembourg |
| Original title: | Luxembourg grófja |
| Shape: | Operetta in three acts |
| Music: | Franz Lehár |
| Libretto : | Robert Bodanzky , Alfred Maria Willner |
| Premiere: | November 12, 1909 |
| Place of premiere: | Theater an der Wien |
| Place and time of the action: | Paris around 1900 |
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The Count of Luxembourg ( Hungarian Luxembourg grófja ) is an operetta in three acts by Franz Lehár . The libretto is by Robert Bodanzky and Alfred Maria Willner . The often widespread information that Leo Stein was also involved in the libretto and that this goes back to Willner's and Bernhard Buchbinder's text for Johann Strauss ' operetta Die Göttin der Vernunft from 1897 is based on errors that have long been written on. The first performance took place on November 12, 1909 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna .
action
The operetta takes place in Paris in the bohemian milieu of the present, the turn of the century .
Prince Basil Basilowitsch fell madly in love with the singer Angèle Didier and has been promoting and observing her secretly for a long time. Now he desperately thinks about a possibility to marry her, because he is forbidden to lead a civil bride to the altar.
The impoverished bon vivant Count René of Luxembourg comes in handy. Basil proposes a deal to René: For half a million, the Count should make the singer his wife pro forma and divorce her after three months, during which he should go into hiding in Paris. The woman would then be in the nobility, which would enable him, Basil, to marry himself.
Count René accepts the offer. The wedding ceremony is carried out in a way that prevents the count from seeing the bride, and so it remains completely unknown to him.
The agreed three months have almost passed when the coincidence Count René ends up in the winter garden of the singer's palace, where she is performing. He falls in love with her straight away and Angèle also takes a liking to Count René, who introduces himself to her as "Baron von Reval".
When Angèle speaks contemptuously of the Count of Luxembourg who allowed himself to be seduced into a fake marriage for money, Count René tells her who he is; and did she not act in the same way, because she could only become a princess as a "countess"? You have nothing to reproach one another; their love remains - Count René has at least pledged his word to Prince Basil; Neither Angèle's ridicule nor her kiss can help him over that.
But the operetta solution is inevitable. Prince Basil has to marry an ancient countess on the Tsar's orders, and Count René gets his confiscated property back.
Well-known songs and pieces of music
- Carnival, your very best time
- A little room so small
- My ancestor was the Luxemburg
- Oh what am I in love with
- Little girl, fine girl
- Is it you, laughing happiness that is now floating past ...
- Dear friend, you don't reach for the stars
- She goes to the left, he goes to the right, man and woman, everyone wants it, ideal marriage is, painless without any pain!
- Unknown, therefore no less interesting
- I was a lion in the drawing room
- A moth came fluttering slightly
- Ballet with a gallop: dance of the hours
Work history
After the success of the Merry Widow , Franz Lehár had undertaken to write another operetta as an autumn novelty for the Theater an der Wien by the end of 1909 and supposedly did this within only three or four weeks, which, according to tradition, was due to the well-suited libretto and his enthusiasm for the subject shouldn't have been difficult. "The Schmarrn is done and if it is not successful, you have to ascribe it to yourself!" With these words Lehár is said to have handed over the operetta to Emil Steininger on June 26, 1909 for Wilhelm Karczag , the successful leaseholder of the Theater an der Wien and Owner of the Karczag publishing house, where Lehár stood in the word - at least that's what a legend says. “We always have two main couples who coo and the funny people who make you laugh. So all tastes can be satisfied. "
At the world premiere, conducted by Robert Stolz , Der Graf von Luxemburg was received with stormy applause and then performed more than 300 times in a row in the Theater an der Wien. Like no other operetta by Lehár, Der Graf von Luxemburg became a pioneer for the development of the salon operetta , which can be explained by Lehár's apt description of the genre. In the period that followed, the operetta experienced multiple changes. The version preferred today comes from a production in the Berlin Theater des Volkes on March 4, 1937.
A very free English adaptation in two acts by Basil Hood and Adrian Rosson ran 240 times with Lehár's music under the title The Count of Luxembourg in London's Daly's Theater and was also a great success the following year in New York's New Amsterdam Theater . In 1926 a silent film was made based on this version; With a new English libretto and new lyrics by Nigel Douglas and Eric Maschwitz, the success was repeated in 1983 at London's Sadler's Wells Theater.
Trivia
Franz Lehár composed this operetta at the same time as the Prince's Child and Gypsy Love . He mistakenly believed that the Prince's Child would be the most successful of the three pieces. He gave the Count of Luxembourg less chance of success.
Are you the Count of Luxembourg? 1968 was a hit by the singer Dorthe Kollo .
Individual evidence
- ^ Anton Mayer: Franz Lehár - The merry widow. The seriousness of the easy muse. Edition Steinbauer, Vienna 2005. pp. 104/105. ISBN 3-902494-05-0
- ↑ Program of the Cologne Philharmonic for The Count of Luxembourg on January 5, 2016: Pages 5 and 6.
- ↑ Apart from Willner's involvement, there is nothing in common with The Goddess of Reason - to be checked in the supplement to the recording on the Naxos label
- ↑ Emil Steininger is a namesake of the writer, music and art critic Emil Maria Steininger , who was also working in Vienna at the same time , cf. German National Library: ( Memento of the original dated August 8, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. “ Emil Heinrich Steininger. Activity dates: 1909. Place of activity: Vienna. "
- ↑ http://www.volksoper.at/Content.Node2/home/spielplan/spielplan_detail.php?eventid=1058709&eventinfo= Volksoper Vienna: The Count of Luxembourg ( Memento of the original from June 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: Der Archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on July 23, 2010)
