When an American armored brigade reached Franz Lehárs villa in Bad Ischl on May 6, 1945, the GIs surprised him in his parlor with a serenade. "The Merry Widow" was not only the favorite operetta of the man with the mustache, it had also been a hit on Broadway for years. A few weeks later, Lehár would tell Klaus Mann, "My Merry Widow was his favorite operetta! That's not my fault, is it? I don't have to thank the Nazis for anything. I didn't ask them for publicity or protection. I just went on doing what I always did - writing music." He would also say : "But it takes enthusiasm to create new works. You have to forget about the world around you. That, of course, is almost impossible at the moment." Such post-war statements are to be taken with a grain of salt but the fact is that Lehár no longer would write new works after the National Socialists took power.
The Merry Widow was performed 483 times in its first run at the Theater an der Wien. That cannot be explained solely by a broadening of the audience. It means that quite a few people went to see it 7 or 8 times. By 1921, the operetta will have appeared 8338 times on exclusively German-speaking stages. At the same time, starting in 1907, the operetta will take the world by storm from London. Schoenberg claimed to know someone who had seen the play more than 100 times. "What was absolutely new about Die Lustige Witwe was the overt eroticism of the subject and the ingenious boldness with which the lively sensuality of the plot was musically interpreted," Bernhard Grun believes. And Die Lustige Witwe is not even Lehár's best operetta.
The proceeds allowed the author to live carefree for the rest of his days. With his first great success he not only found his own style, we also witness the birth of the dance operetta : gallop, march, mazurka, waltz, polka, polonaise, kolo, cake walk, all the dance forms practiced around 1905 unite in the piece to form an unremitting dance orgy. And not insignificantly : when Hanna Glawari and Danilo Danilowitsch indulge in the waltz, it is the dance that expresses their wordless thoughts : the dance as "vertical expression of a horizontal desire" as George Bernard Shaw once put it.
The music dramatizes the duality in the libretto between Paris and Pontevedro (the pseudonym for the Balkan state of Montenegro). Carl Dahlhaus describes it as a style mix with the two dominant strains being a buffo Parisian tone to stage the external outer plot - the political intrigues and farcical action - and a sentimental, romantic folk song style to portray the inner pyschological state of the characters. But in the end, it is the sentimental Volkston that triumphs. Hanna marries Danilo and the homeland is saved; the adulterous intrigue between Valencienne and Camille is foiled. In summary, one could say that Lehár and his librettists Victor Léon and Leo Stein found a way to revive Offenbach and yet inter him again, a way for the the sentimental and the satirical to productively coexist.
A white coffin stands on the stage. Funeral ribbons in red and blue lie draped over the coffin, with a donkey as its emblem. It must be the state banker of Pontevedro who has breathed his last because it is his widow Hanna Glawari who leads the procession of mourners to the grave while the orchestra subdued and rather inappropriately plays the earworm of the piece - the "Lippen schweigen" waltz - only to burst into the gallop of the opening number. The double standard of the piece has thus found a powerful statement. The Merry Widow has no overture. Sometimes conductors put together their own overture as a collage of the main themes. No one seems to want to play the overture that Lehár would write 35 years later for his 70th birthday. Is it because it was meant to be a concert piece and therefore may have become impractically long or is it because it was dedicated to Adolf Hitler?
The imminent bankruptcy of the fictional Balkan state is very tangible in Friedrich Eggert's scenography. The ceiling in its Paris embassy is propped up with screw props as if on a construction site. The old-fashioned wallpaper breathes the atmosphere of the Eastern Bloc. Pieces of plaster fall from the ceiling. Baron Mirko Zeta kicks a hole in the floor and walks on a sore foot for the rest of the evening.
Did the Cologne Opera turn it into a real dance operetta? Yes indeed, on that respect it does not disappoint. The eight dancers, four ladies and four genderfluid gentlemen, are a real asset. They participate in just about every number. Each time they change outfit (costumes: Alfred Mayerhofer): sometimes in chiffon dresses, sometimes in folkloric costumes as during the Vilja song, sometimes as pink devils with horns and tails as a counterpoint to Valencienne's feigned marital fidelity. Queerness is not absent but it plays no role in the main plot, only in Christoph Jonas' fairly classical but efficient choreography. The male chorus is slavish in its idolization of the 20 billion rich widow, and director Bernd Mottl knows how to direct the movements of a group.
A pause is needed for scenery conversion after the first act. Hadn't the rich widow promised to take care of the embassy for 7 days? It gives the director an opportunity to pick up on the construction woes concerning the Cologne opera house at the Offenbachplatz during the dialogues. Thanks to Hanna's financial injection, the walls are now decorated with vernacular wall mosaics. Six musicians in balkan hats form a tamburizza band playing the kolo to introduce the Vilja song. "Ja, das Studium der Weiber ist schwer" is a real highlight with all the male soloists united in their frustration with women while the dancers fend for themselves like cleaning women with a vacuum cleaner. In the big dance numbers, the chorus participates with synchronous gestures. They do so wonderfully. I am not familiar with the verse that Njegus sings together with the dancers from the auditorium between the second and third acts. It is about his attachment to Parisian nightlife and his frustration as a non-aristocrat. There is no information in the program booklet where this song comes from. On the other hand, some numbers have been deleted such as "Dummer, dummer Reitersmann," the very first (but certainly not the best) song Lehár ever wrote for the piece.
The third act proceeds in an atmosphere of sexual fetishism. Black and gold are the colors. The mosaics are now hidden behind black curtains. Everyone is in black or leather, the dancers show off in kinky latex. Valencienne, leader of the grisettes, wields the whip like a dominatrix in hip-high boots. A golden donkey stands with his rear end facing the audience, and when Mirko Zeta casually asks the widow for a billion to finance the Cologne opera, gold ducats fly around. If only real life could be an operetta.
Ralf Lukas shines as Baron Mirko Zeta in his portrayal of the bureaucrat and horned husband. Rebecca Nelsen is a spirited Valencienne but not so convincing as vocalist. Dmitry Ivanchey as Camille de Rosillon, fares better in his romance "Wie eine Rosenknospe...Komm in den kleine Pavillon." Adrian Eröd as Danilo possesses a high baritone he sometimes uses to sing Loge in Budapest. Elissa Huber as Hanna Glawari switched her craft 10 years ago : from musical to classical soprano. She has the allure for the character, she has acting talent and she knows how to handle the lightning-fast dialogues without problems. What she shows is : a well-projecting soprano, a beautiful timbre and ringing top notes. Next summer she will sing Agathe in the Bregenzer Freischütz. Ralph Morgenstern as Njegus also comes from the musical world. His humor is dry and that of a frustrated Danilo.
Andrea Sanguinetti, music director at the Aalto-Musiktheater in Essen, has a flair for operetta. The orchestra pit in the Staatenhaus is long and narrow and the conductor, who has hardly any musicians in front of him, has to bend to the left or right. Nevertheless, the Gürzenich Orchester sounds very disciplined with many precious details in the wind instruments. The brass, including no less than 4 horns, is divided between left and right creating a balanced sound. Dynamically this is all very differentiated and all the apotheoses produce maximum effect. And as Johannes Heesters already knew : "It comes down to the second".