The Student Prince
The Student Prince in Heidelberg , later abbreviated to The Student Prince , is an American operetta by Sigmund Romberg (music) and Dorothy Agnes Donnelly (text) based on the play Alt-Heidelberg by Wilhelm Meyer-Förster .
premiere
The operetta premiered on December 2, 1924 at the Jolson Theater on New York's Broadway . The Shubert Brothers, as the owner of the license for the USA, had already produced the play several times without success and had Romberg set it to music. Romberg had to assert himself with his music because the producers found it too operatic and pathetic.
However, it was precisely this that triggered the success. Production resumed twice on Broadway and had a total of well over a thousand performances. Due to the success of the touring troupes in the following 20 years, the play became a synonym for operetta in the rural areas of the USA and, due to the sometimes inadequate quality of the performances, also a prime example of smear theater .
Plot and music
Like the musical The Sound of Music (1959) later , The Student Prince created an ancient dream Europe as an American stage fantasy. It tells the story of a fictional German heir to the throne (Crown Prince Karl Franz) from the operetta state of Karlsberg, who got to know freedom while studying in Heidelberg . The fact that the prince falls improperly in love with the landlord's daughter Kathie causes complications, and so this relationship is sacrificed for reasons of state . This was in the US, a country that overcoming class barriers , perceived was aimed as an exotic attraction, similar to later in the musical The King and I .
The final duet "Deep in My Heart" became the epitome of the American operetta hit and the subject of numerous new poems and settings, including Britney Spears . The choir “Drink! Drink! Drink! ”By the Heidelberg students became particularly popular because the USA was in the middle of alcohol prohibition at the time of the premiere . The parodies are also countless, for example by the student choir “Come Boys. Let's All Be Gay Boys ”.
Further performances
The German premiere in a musical version by Michael Krasznay-Krausz came on stage in 1932 in the Großes Schauspielhaus Berlin. So just before the seizure of power by the National Socialists, however, the US piece could develop any major impact.
Similar to The Sound of Music for Salzburg , The Student Prince gained tourist significance for Heidelberg. The original English version of the play has been shown at the Heidelberg Castle Festival since 1974 on the initiative of director Helmut Hein . For a long time it was performed every year in the courtyard of Heidelberg Castle .
Film adaptations
Ernst Lubitsch filmed the piece as a silent film in 1927 under the title The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg . A sound film version by Richard Thorpe was released in theaters in 1954. Mario Lanza sang the playback voice for the prince. The film composer Nikolaus Brodszky wrote additional hits for Lanza that remained associated with his name (“I'll Walk With God”, “Beloved”).
The actor and screenwriter Eddie Murphy shifted the story to New York in the 1980s in the comedy The Prince of Zamunda (1988).
literature
- Carl Dahlhaus , Sieghart Döhring (Ed.): Piper's Enzyklopädie des Musiktheater , Vol. 5, pp. 330f., Munich: Piper 1994. ISBN 3-492-02415-7
Web links
swell
- ↑ Der Studentenprinz - the student prince in the program of the Heidelberg Castle Festival ( Memento from May 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).