Die lustige Witwe at The State Opera

Dates: (4/3/2014 - 6/18/2014 )

Theatre:

The State Opera

Legerova 75
Praha 1,Praha 1 110 00

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Phone: +420 224 901 668

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On the penultimate day of 1905, Vienna experienced a huge sensation. The Theater an der Wien presented Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), an operetta by the little-known thirty-five-year-old composer Franz Lehár, a native of Komárom, Hungary. After graduating from the Prague Conservatory, in 1899 Lehár settled in Vienna, composed waltzes and, with varying degrees of success, operettas too. The librettists Victor Léon and Leo Stein then offered him their German text based on a comedy by the French dramatist Henri Meilhac (co-author of Bizet’s Carmen), titled L’attaché d’ambassade. The famous operetta composer of the time Richard Heuberger had turned down the libretto, hence Léon and Stein took the risk of addressing Lehár – and it certainly paid off. Lehár liked the witty theme: representatives of the poverty-stricken Grand Duchy of Pontevedro strive to marry the wealthy widow Hanna Glawari, who lives in Paris, to a Ponteverdian so as to keep her fortune in the country. The task of winning her heart (and property) is entrusted to the young Count Danilo Danilovitc, First Secretary at the Embassy in Paris. The premiere of the work in 1905 in Vienna was Lehár’s first triumph and the operetta soon conquered the world. Within the first five years alone, it had 20,000 performances, and in 1907 its first gramophone recording was released. Die Lustige Witwe is Lehár’s best-known work and one of the most frequently staged classical operettas worldwide, included in the repertoire of the renowned opera houses. The work was most recently performed at the State Opera in 1945, at the outset of the glorious era of the May 5th Theatre. The new production of Die lustige Witwe will extend the State Opera’s operetta repertoire, previously only represented by Strauss’s Die Fledermaus.

Cast and Creative team for Die lustige Witwe at The State Opera

Libretto: Victor Léon, Leo Stein
Conductor: Enrico Dovico
Stage director: Martin Otava
Sets: Ján Zavarský
Costumes: Dana Svobodová
Choreography: Petr Jirsa
Chorus master: Tvrtko Karlovi?

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