Most people have heard of “The Merry Widow Waltz.” Recently I watched the 1996 New York City Opera production (embedded below the fold) of the whole Merry Widow operetta. The music is lush and the singing isn’t too over-the-top-operatic.
The Merry Widow [...] is an operetta by the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play, L'attaché d'ambassade (The Embassy Attaché) by Henri Meilhac.
The operetta has enjoyed extraordinary international success since its 1905 premiere in Vienna and continues to be frequently revived and recorded.
en.wikipedia.org/...
We first meet the widow in the last hours of her year-long mourning for a much older husband, who has left her exceedingly rich.
Here’s Kelli O’Hara as the eponymous widow in the 2014 Metropolitan Opera production’s final dress rehearsal:
🐩 🐩 🐩
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a PM to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
Monday Youffraita
The Merry Widow is an ever-popular delight.
There is no containing the enduring appeal and endearing charms of Franz Lehar's 1905 bonbon. Apart from four American films and others in other countries, ''The Merry Widow'' is an opera-house staple. ✂️
No matter whether you recall the plot about the saving of the economy of the mythical Marsovia (called Pontevedrinia, a Slavic land, in the German version). If the ''merry widow'' Sonia Sedoya (called Hanna Glawari in the original) marries one of her ever-adoring French suitors. Voila, there go all her millions out of the country, and there goes Marsovia.
www.nytimes.com/...
Structurally, this operetta reminds me very much of classic American musical theater. And there’s an excellent reason for that, even though operetta is a distinctly European form.
Call it the audacity of talent. When Gilbert and Sullivan and Offenbach simultaneously take hold of American stages in the back third of the nineteenth century, their influence on the musical becomes, quite simply, tremendous. We know this because it was only after exposure to the European musical that the American form began to favor full-length story scores: the very basis of the musical as we know it today.
Ethan Mordden, Anything Goes: A History of American Musical Theater, p. 10.
🎵
The Vilja Song, a showcase for sopranos, tells a folktale:
Vila (pl. vile, vily) are a type of supernatural beings, already identified as nymphs [...] They are described as beautiful, eternally young, dressed in white, with eyes flashing like thunders, and provided with wings. They live in the clouds, in mountain woods or in the waters.
en.wikipedia.org/...
Lehar’s music is just lovely, of course. And who doesn’t love a waltz? They’re so cheerful. Here, that rogue Danilo sings that he’ll be at Maxim’s:
The show takes place at three parties, over three nights (one per act). And this is the complete operetta — the 1996 City Opera version. When you have some free time to relax, enjoy!
Cast of Major Characters
Jane Thorngren — The merry widow, Hanna Glawari
Michael Hayes — Count Danilo Danilovich
Patricia Johnson — Valencienne
Carlo Scibelli — Camille de Rosillion
George S. Irving — Baron Mirko Zeta
Robert Creighton — Njegus
🎵