[naar literatuurlijst]

inhoud:

• Franz Lehár (1870 - 1948) 
• Childhood and youth
• Engagement as violinist (1888) 
• Military bandmaster in Losoncz (1890) 
• „Kukuschka" - the first opera (1895 - 96)
• „Gold and Silver" -breakthrough fo the individuality (1902)
• Conductor at the Theater an der Wien - „Wiener Frauen"
• „The Merry Widow" - a world success (1905)
• Style of living - marriage
• New successes 1909/1910
• „Das Fürstenkind"
• Der Graf von Luxemburg"
• „Zigeunerliebe"

BIOGRAPHY first part (1870-1914)

Franz Lehár (1934)

The world of the operetta of the 20th century finds one of its most famous, most popular and most versatile exponent in Franz Lehár: from the world success of the „Merry Widow" to the masterworks of the late creative period „Paganini", Der Zarewitsch", „Friederike", „Das Land des Lächelns". Franz Lehár's life can not be seen separately from the political cultural-historical background of its era. The stretch of time from 1870 to 1948 covers the late stadium of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, characterized by national fragmentation, but also by the cultural heyday of the turn of the century, the time of World War I and II and the period in between, in which hopeful awakenings and menaces by inflation and mass unemployment balanced each other. To the disastrous, historically unprecedented upheavals of the first half of the 20th century the artistic and cultural life reacted in very different ways: While a „new music" (represented by Arnold Schönberg, Anton Webern and others) was out for a radical break with the tradition, while a new painting left the world of the representational art and provoked through uncompromising abstraction, there was in wide sections of the population the wish for comfort, brightening and distraction by art. That is the reason why the revolutionary stadium became also a height of the pleasing melodies and the amusing music theater - precisely the „silver operetta", which Franz Lehár and others led to world successes.

 Music was - conditioned by the job of the father - from the beginning a natural element of his surroundings. The father brought the first violin home, even before the boy could read and write, and began to give violin and piano lessons. The mother cultivated the free improvising on the piano. In Budapest, at the age of eleven, Franz composed his first lied („Ich fühl', daß ich tief innen kranke") and strengthened the father in his decision to grant him a regular musical formation. It began at first in Mährisch-Sterberg, where the brother of Lehár's father, Anton, worked as municipal music director, and continued at the conservatory of Prague from 1882 on. He studied there for six years.

 Later on, the son and the father - at the same time his military superior - had soon disagreements. Franz made off and found a post as bandmaster at the 25th infantry regiment in Losoncz on Eipel. „20 years old, I have broken father's record by four years to be recruited as youngest conductor of the army with 24!"

 In 1894, the service in Losoncz ended with an „affair". Lehár, as soldier always respectful and obliging towards his superiors, was guilty of „insubordination", when he did not obey the order of his field major to conduct a concert to the end. A court of honor decided against him, he had to ask to be discharged. Now, Lehár opted for conducting the navy band in Pola, the naval port of the monarchy. Here, an orchestra 110 strong was at his disposal. In all, his leaving from Losoncz turned out to be a lucky chance. One month after his entering into service in Pola, Wilhelm II, since 1888 German emperor, visited the Austrian naval port. The band, Lehár conducting, had to play four hours for the prominent guest. The result was the award of an imperial order. The proud navy bandmaster asked immediately to be photographed with this decoration.

 The soldier Alexis loves Tatiana, daughter of a Volga barge master. He defends the old man by force of arms against Sasha and against the head of a village. Deported for life in the gold mines, he meets there Sasha as his guard. But Sasha turns out to be magnanimous and helps the former rival to escape.

Tatiana follows her lover in the steppe - till the death by snow. The poetic-musical central motif is the cuckoo call, which accompanies the first relieving rays of the spring sun. Lehár was inspired by the Russian melancholic subject. With the „Zarewitsch" he took up a second time the eastern atmosphere.

 The hope of a material success of the work, in which some publishers began to take an interest, induced him to retire from the post as military bandmaster without visible reason. As civilian in Budapest, he prepared the première of the opera, fixed for November 27th 1896 in Leipzig. The account of his life-style given by his mother to his brother Anton shows not much of the later always conscientious-pedantic composer: „One day, he writes around the clock. [...] Then, there are times where he does not work at all. Everything has to come by itself. He dreams of 100,000s, but he is completely mistaken there. You can imagine that he has mismanaged his money. He has sold his piano and the violin and is in debt!"

 The première of „Kukuschka" in Leipzig was performed on the due date. The work did meet with success with the public and did find friendly critiques in the press, but the hoped-for breakthrough failed to come. Lehár had no choice but to take up again the post of regiment bandmaster in Trieste.

 On April 1st 1898, Lehár took up the post of his father at the infantry regiment no. 87 in Budapest. „Kukuschka" was accepted at the royal opera house. The opera won again applause, flowers, curtain calls and friendly critiques, but also this time the hoped-for series of performances at other stages failed to come.

 The Princess Pauline Metternich-Sándor, a central figure of the Viennese musical and cultural life, had brought annual charity festivities into being, which were as magnificent balls in the center of the carnival. The mottos, to which the decorations, the clothes and the opening waltzes had to be appropriate, had sometimes an exotic character („Japanese cherry-blossom celebration", „festivity in a secessionists' village" etc.). As Pauline Metternich planned a „Gold and Silver" ball for the carnival 1902, she sent for young conductor of the „26ers" and commissioned him to compose the „name waltz" of this festivity. „Gold and Silver" met with little interest. At first, nobody could imagine that the flop of the evening would become a world success. Nevertheless, Bosworth publishers took charge of the publication. Towards the close of the year, Lehár heard the first news of the Anglo-American „Gold and Silver" success. Letters of congratulation from Paris, Berlin and Moscow confirmed him that the breakthrough towards international notoriety succeeded henceforth.

 Decisive for his career as operetta composer was the acquaintance with the librettist Viktor Léon, the most important and successful personality of the Viennese operetta scene. Léon furnished him the libretto for the operetta „Der Rastelbinder", which was accepted by the Carl-Theater, the competitor of the Theater an der Wien. Lehár worked at the same time also for the Theater an der Wien. In cooperation with Ottokar Tann-Bergler, a friend of the in Vienna very popular actor Alexander Girardi, he composed „Wiener Frauen". The „double game" of the conductor angered Karczag. After a short employment, Lehár had to tender his resignation, but „Wiener Frauen" still continued to be on the program of the theater. It was performed for the first time on November 21st 1902, Girardi sparkled as leading actor and the newspapers celebrated the composer as „the hearty welcomed appearance of a musician, who knows how to compose operettas after a long time." At first, the preparations of the première of the „Rastelbinder" presented difficulties. Louis Treumann, the star of the Carl-Theater, hesitated to act a Jew in times of perpetual anti-semitic riots. But Lehár and Léon dealt with him and the première was performed on December 20th, four weeks after the first performance of „Wiener Frauen". The success with the public was loud and spontaneous, the musical reviewers were not convinced.

The première of the „Merry Widow" met - according to the Viennese „Volksblatt" - with a sensational success „produced by the great music based on a good book and by excellent acting" (the leading actors were Mizzi Günther and Louis Treumann). But the opinions in the press were divided all told. Karl Kraus for instance found the new operetta to be „the most repugnant thing I have ever seen in a theater". At first, it was not in the offing - as for the „Gold and Silver" waltz - that the work would be a world success. Only garden and promenade concerts made the melodies well-known (the most popular were „Vilja, o Vilja" and „Lippen schweigen"), the rush set in and the „Merry Widow" was on the program almost continuously till March 1907. On April 24th 1907, it celebrated the four hundredth performance.

In 1907, the operetta conquered London and New York, in 1908 Copenhagen, Moscow and Milan, in 1909 Madrid and Paris and in 1910 Brussels. It became well-know worldwide under 25 names in all.

Also in Bad Ischl, Franz Lehár met in 1906 the woman with whom he would live more than forty years hereafter; Sophie Meth, the daughter of the Viennese carpet dealer Siegmund Paschkis. At the time of this first acquaintance, she was 28 years old and, according to a Lehár biographer „of Titian-like beauty and grace, worldly-wise, cheerful, warm-hearted and tremendously attractive" - but already married. For Lehár's sake, she separated from her husband and lived with the composer in a free life partnership until 1921, when Lehár came finally to the decision to get married to her.

Despite the harmony of the couple, the composer attached importance to a maximum of autonomy in his way of living. All his life, he insisted on separate apartments. In Bad Ischl, Sophie lived in the „small house" of the villa, in Vienna near the Theobaldgasse, where Lehár had his apartment. Later, when he acquired the „Schikaneder-Schlößl" in Nußdorf, he bricked up the doors between his and her rooms: The two living areas were connected only by the staircase.

 Lehár reached the turning point only in the season 1909/1910. Within 93 days - between October 7th 1909 and January 8th 1910 - he appeared before the public with three works, which rank with the best of the operetta genre: „Das Fürstenkind", „Der Graf von Luxemburg" and „Zigeunerliebe".

 Therefore 1910 was a year of records. In three Viennese theaters - Theater an der Wien, Johann-Strauss-Theater and Carltheater - Lehár's operettas were performed two hundred times each. The composer reached the culmination point of his popularity.

„Das Fürstenkind"

The libretto of the „Fürstenkind" was written by Viktor Léon, who put here again (like already in the „Rastelbinder" and in the „Merry Widow") contrasting nationalities in the center of the action: the Greek-Macedonian and the modern-American.

 Hadschi Stavros, prince of Parmes, is clandestinely the chieftain of a gang, which haunts the forests around Athens. His daughter, Photini, does not know anything about her father's dark doings. She loves Bill Harris, an American naval officer, while the aging Stavros loves the beautiful banker's daughter Mary Ann captured by his accomplices. Photini and Bill come together over all obstacles, while Mary Ann had to remain a dream for the prince.

„Der Graf von Luxemburg"

Still during the composition of the „Fürstenkind", Karczag, the director of the Theater an der Wien, reminded Lehár of an old contract binding the composer to set the „Graf von Luxemburg" to music. Lehár should compose the operetta as „insertion" in three to four weeks. He accepted the challenge, but admitted later: „It was the first time in my life that I have worked slovenly!"

A. M. Willner wrote the libretto. Already Johann Strauss wrote on the same subject „Die Göttin der Vernunft", but it had no success. Together with Robert Bodanzky Willner revised the book for Lehár and made with it a text model, which varied the successful conception of the „Merry Widow" in a clever way. René, the zestful count of Luxembourg, has squandered and lost his fortune in gambling. At the suggestion of the rich Prince Basil Basilowitsch, he contracts against a high payment a fictitious marriage with the singer Angèle Didier, who needs his title of count. In the second act they fall in love with each other and in the third the fictitious marriage becomes a real one.  The public received the „Grafen von Luxemburg" with a similar enthusiasm to the „Merry Widow".

Franz Lehár ( 1910)

"Zigeunerliebe"
 

The third successful operetta of the season 1909/10, „Zigeunerliebe", was performed on January 8th 1910 at the Carltheater. Music with Hungarian color and leitmotiv structures characterize the style of this work, which inclines towards the genre of the opera both in the music and in the text. The action - this libretto too is written by Willner and Bodanzky - is constructed as link and frame story. Zorika, the beautiful daughter of an estate owner, falls in love with a primas unworthy of her. One summer night, she dreams about the disappointments of this love and returns after awaking (in the third act) to her initial fiancé. The highlights of the partition were the waltz „Nur die Liebe hält uns jung" and „Zorika, Zorika, kehre zurück".

Das Carltheater