Der Graf von Luxemburg

"The Count of Luxembourg " - ung Luxembourg grófja - is an operetta in three acts by Franz Lehár. The libretto was written by Robert Bodanzky, Leo Stein and Alfred Maria Willner by Will former and Bernhard Buchbinder text operetta " The Goddess of Reason " from 1897. The premiere took place on November 12, 1909 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.

Franz Lehár was committed after the success of "The Merry Widow" to write another operetta as Herbstnovität for the Theater an der Wien until the end of 1909 and completed this supposedly within just three or four weeks, giving him according to tradition, because of the good suitable libretto and his enthusiasm for the subject should not have been difficult. " The rubbish is done and when it will not be successful, you have to attribute it to yourselves! " With these words Lehàr should have passed the operetta on June 26, 1909 Emil Steininger for Wilhelm Karczag, the successful tenant of the Theater an der Wien and owner of the Karczag -Verlag, in which Lehár was in the word - it handed down at least one legend. " We always have two main couples who coo, and the funny people who provoke laughter. So there are all flavors satisfied. "

When conducted by Robert Stolz premiere The Count of Luxembourg was received with thunderous applause and then performed more than 300 times in succession at the Theater an der Wien. Like no other Lehár operetta was The Count of Luxembourg at the forefront of the development of the salon operetta, which can be explained with the apt description of the genre by Lehár. In the following period, the operetta became multiple amendments. Today's preferred version is from a staging in Berlin Theatre of the People on March 4, 1937.

A very free English paraphrase in two acts by Basil Hood and Adrian Rosson ran with Lehár's music under the title The Count of Luxembourg from 20 May 1911 in London Daly 's Theatre 240 times and was also a great success in the following year in New York's New Amsterdam Theatre. 1926 silent film was shot on the basis of this version; with a new English libretto and new lyrics by Nigel Douglas and Eric Maschwitz himself repeated the success in 1983 at London's Sadler 's Wells Theatre.

The people

  • René, Count of Luxembourg (Tenor)
  • Prince Basil Basilowitsch ( Comm ), in the world premiere presented by Max Pallenberg
  • Armand Brissard, Painter ( tenor)
  • Angèle Didier, singer of the great opera Paris ( soprano)
  • Juliette Vermont ( soprano)

Place and time

The operetta is set in Paris in the bohemian milieu in the then present, the turn of the century.

Action

Prince Basil Basilowitsch has fallen in love with the singer Angèle Didier and promotes and observed them for a long time secretly. Now he meditates desperate for a way to marry her, because it is forbidden to carry out a bourgeois bride to the altar.

As the impoverished playboy Count René of Luxembourg it is just right. Basil Rene proposes a deal: For a half million, the Count is to make the singer a pro forma to his wife and get a divorce from her again after three months, during which he should go into hiding in Paris. The woman then befände in the peerage, which he, Basil, would allow the marriage itself.

Count René responded to the offer. The marriage ceremony is performed in a way that René denied the view of his bride, and so it remains completely unknown to him.

The agreed three months have nearly passed, when the random René verschlägt in the winter garden in the Palais of the singer, where this is occurring. He falls straight into the unknown singer Angèle and also takes a liking to him, who imagines her as " Baron von Reval ".

As Angèle speaks contemptuously of that Count of Luxembourg, who had let himself be seduced for money for a fake marriage, you say René, who he is; and they did not act like because they could be princess as " Countess "? You have nothing to reproach each other; their love remains - René has the prince after all, pledged his word; about it can help him away neither ANGELES ridicule nor her kiss.

But the operetta solution is inevitable. Basil must marry the Tsar's command an ancient countess, and René gets back his confiscated assets.

Well-known songs and pieces of music

  • Girl small girl fine
  • Are you 's, laughing happiness that floats over now ...
  • Dear friend, you do not reach for the stars
  • She goes left, he goes right, man and woman, every 'd 's, such a marriage is perfect, painless without any woe!
  • Unknown, it is no less interesting
  • Ballet with gallop: Dance of the Hours
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