Patrick Bade
Viennese Operetta, Part 2

Patrick Bade - Viennese Operetta, Part 2

- And I want to try and provide an hour of distraction from all the horrible things that are going on in the world, and I’m going to plunge you straight into the world of the Viennese, the silver age of Viennese operetta.

• So that was, of course, “The Merry Widow.” And we can say that the Silver Age of Viennese operetta began on the 31st of December, 1905. That is the date of the premiere of “The Merry Widow.” The Golden Age, of course, is the age of Johann Strauss, but he died in the late 1890s. And for a couple of years, it looked like there was nobody really to succeed him. The great operetta theatre where “The Fledermaus” was premiered and “The Gypsy Baron” was the Theatre an der Wien. And they had a pretty busy schedule and they had a gap and they had a wonderful libretto, actually one of the best operetta librettos ever, which is the libretto for “The Merry Widow.” I mentioned last time, it was based on a play by Meilhac and Halevy who were the great librettists of Offenbach. And they gave this libretto to the most popular operetta composer of the ‘90s, a man called Richard Heuberger, who is best known for an operetta called “Der Opernball.” And in fact, just one particular number in that, which is still very popular, called “Im Chambre Separee” has a gorgeous tune. I played it to you in my Romantic Vienna lecture. So he sat down with libretto, and then disaster struck, because he discovered that he’d run out of tunes. Of course, tunes are really good tunes. That’s what you want above all in operetta. You want the audience to go out humming the tunes at the end. So he had to admit he couldn’t do it. And the management of the Theatre an der Wien, they were kind of desperate.

They thought, “Well, who can… We’ve got to fill this gap, and who can we get to write this operetta?” Well, in fact, the director of the theatre, the musical director of the theatre was a man called Franz Lehar, who had already written a couple of operettas without enormous success. And in their desperation they turned to him and they said, “Do you think you could do this?” And he said, “Yes, I’ll have a go.” So this is this is Lehar, by the way, in his wonderful Belle Epoque music room. And so he took… They said, “Right, well, we’ll give you a chance.” And they gave him a piece of text and they say, “Come up with a tune by tomorrow.” And so he did, and he rang them. Telephones were already quite widely in use in big cities. And over the phone he said, “This is the tune.” But I’m going to play it to you, sung rather better than that. Anyway, they said, “All right, you’ve got the job.” And he signed a contract with them. But even after this, they were very nervous because Lehar was a really untried figure as far as they were concerned, and at one point they even tried to buy him out of his contract but at that point he was well into it and he refused to be bought out of the contract. So as I said, it has a wonderful, very funny text and it could probably work even as play without music, based, as I said, on Meilhac and Halevy, but actually the German libretto was written by Victor Leon and Leo Stein, and their real names were, I mean, Leo Stein was Leo Rosenstein and Victor Leon was really Victor Hirschfeld.

So it’s interesting to point out that, of course, both were Viennese Jews, and Lehar himself was not Jewish, but he’s really the only person today that I’m talking about who was not. The Silver Age of Operetta was a very, very Jewish affair, and everybody that Lehar worked with throughout his career, his librettists and his star singers were all, I say, I don’t want really to get into that awful debate about who’s Jewish and who isn’t, who’s a Jew and who isn’t. But they were all, shall we say, to use Jonathan Miller’s word, they were Jew-ish. And here is Lehar with his two librettists on the right hand side. Oops, why has that stuck? Something’s frozen. Yeah, that’s better. Here is Louis Treumann and Mizzi Gunther. Louis Treumann was the big star of this period of operetta. And I will talk more about him later. Now, the plot of “The Merry Widow,” it’s set in Paris. So you could hardly think of any work of art that more exemplifies the Belle Epoque, this wonderful, pleasure-loving, hedonistic period just leading up to the First World War. And it’s set in an embassy, and it’s the embassy of a small imaginary Balkan country called Pontevedro. It’s obviously really meant to be Montenegro. And Lehar, who is actually of Hungarian origin, does wonderful fake ethnic folk music. And here is a little bit of it. So those are folk dances of Pontevedro. All these operettas had very standardised plots that you expect to have a hero and a heroine, of course, and you expect to have a happy ending between them after various vicissitudes.

You also expect to have a secondary couple who are sometimes comic. Not really in this case, though. I mean, there is a secondary couple. Valencienne is the second part. Now, this is the great Fritzi Massary, who was herself, of course, originally Viennese, but she moved to Berlin. And I told you that story in the context of romantic Vienna. She was the big female operetta star of the first 30 years of the 20th century. And she played at various points both heroines in “The Merry Widow,” but I’d say temperamentally and vocally she’s actually better suited to the secondary role of Valencienne. And Lehar obviously wanted to encourage her to take that role, and he wrote the piece that I played you in that lecture, “Ich hol dir vom Himmel das Blau”, in order really, it’s not usually done now, when you have the performance of Merry Widow, but he wanted to give something a bit more meaty to Fritzi Massary. But I’m going to play you a little bit of her as Valencienne. She’s being chatted up and seduced and plied with champagne, and as you’ll hear she gets really quite tipsy.

• I just adore her tipsy giggles there at the end as she’s had one glass of champagne too many. And now I’m going to play you, she’s a married woman, of course, she’s telling you, she’s a respectable married woman, but she’s tempted. And here is the young man who is tempting her. And sung like this I can well imagine that any woman would be very tempted. This is actually a version in French and I think you know by now my lack of enthusiasm for most German tenors who have this rather throaty, effortful sound. This is so easy and so full, it’s a very, very French sound indeed. This is a singer called Andre Mallabrera, sung in French, and I think this is extremely seductive. He’s trying to lure her into a little pavillion where he evil will with her. Now, who could possibly resist that? So here is the Theatre an der Wien where that was first performed, and of course, this was the most important theatre for Viennese operetta, but there were others. This is the Carltheater. This is Johann Strauss Theatre. This is the Volksoper. And they’re all turning out these operettas in the early 1900s. And many went on to conquer the world, particularly, of course, “The Merry Widow.”

You can see this is Lehar packing up “The Merry Widow,” and you can see all the places she’s gone to, Stockholm, Budapest, Rome, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, and on the left you can see how New York went crazy about the the “The Merry Widow.” Buenos Aires by 1907, this is just two years later, Buenos Aires, there were five different theatres putting on “The Merry Widow” in five different languages, and here are three of the, Mizzi Gunther, who’s the very first one, Lily Elsie in the middle, she was very popular in London. So it was a great vehicle for glamorous singing actresses. Lehar became immensely rich, as did the other composers of the Silver Age that I’ll come to later. And this generated quite a lot of jealousy and quite a lot of nastiness that often had a very anti-Semitic tinge to it because, as I said, the Silver Age of operetta was such a Jewish affair. I don’t know whether you can see well on the left hand side, but there’s a caricature of all the great composers of the past, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Haydn and so on, looking down from heaven, rather infuriated, and underneath there’s, you’ve got all these composers, Oscar Straus, Leo Fall, all those sorts of people who are churning out the operettas and earning lots of money. So this does bring me to Lehar, of course, as I said, he’s the one composer I’m talking about tonight, the only one, who’s not Jewish, though his wife was, there he is with his wife on the right hand side.

They were based in Berlin in the '20s, of course, they fled back to Austria in 1933, but then, of course, Hitler caught up with them again. And so, Lehar was in a very difficult situation. He was protected by Goebbels. Both Goebbels and Hitler were a huge fan of Lehar and particularly “The Merry Widow” despite its inconvenient librettists. So there is a picture on the left of Lehar with Goebbels. And of course, Lehar was incredibly anxious about the safety of his wife, and Goebbels said, “All right, here is my private telephone number, and if you have any trouble regarding your wife, all you have to do is use my private number.” And in fact, on two occasions the Gestapo did come to their house to arrest and take away Lehar’s wife. And so he was able to ring Goebbels’ private number, hand over the phone to the Gestapo and said, “Would you like to talk with Herr Goebbels about this?” So he was able to protect his wife. He was less able to, he certainly tried, we know that he tried to protect some of his colleagues, that Dr. Lohner-Beda, who was the librettist of “The Land of Smiles,” you see him there on the left-hand side, there’s, I don’t know who the man behind Lehar is, but there’s the great Hungarian star Gitta Alpar, Lohner-Beda and Richard Tauber. So, Gitta Alpar and Tauber, of course, managed to escape, Tauber to England, Gitta Alpar to America, Lohner-Beda didn’t, and despite all his efforts he was taken away and murdered in Auschwitz.

This is Louis Treumann, who was the first Danilo in “The Merry Widow,” and Lehar, on one occasion, he did manage to get Treumann out of prison, but he was rearrested and sent to Theresienstadt, where he died and that is his death certificate on the right hand side. And of course, Tauber was pilloried. Tauber who’s Catholic and whose mother was Catholic, his father was Jewish, and that was enough to have him included, to be pilloried in the Nazi exhibition of degenerate music, as you can see here. But “The Merry Widow,” she conquered the world and she endured. And it was probably one of the most performed pieces in every country during the Second World War. As I said, Hitler loved “The Merry Widow,” and just before war broke out, there was a production in Berlin with the Dutch tenor, Johannes Heesters, who you see, and Hitler was such a big fan. He went to see it six nights in a row. So “The Merry Widow” was done in Paris, it was done in New York, and there was a very successful London production that you can see here with Cyril Ritchard and Madge Elliott, they were a married couple, and they toured with it.

They followed in the footsteps of the Eighth Army, and they toured with it all the way along North Africa, to Cairo and landing up in Tel Aviv. So “Merry Widow,” such a huge, huge success, how to follow it up? And four years later, in, I think is it 1909, yes, 1909, he had another huge success with “The Count of Luxembourg,” once again a massive international success. It may not be so familiar to you because that was a rather more ephemeral success. I can tell you how big a success it was because every time I go to the flea market I find piles of postcards, piles of sheet music, a huge success in Paris as “Le Comte de Luxembourg.” But none of, I think you can say that “The Merry Widow” was a one-off success and it’s not just that the music is so great, it’s that the libretto is good. But here is a gorgeous tune from “The Count of Luxembourg.”

• And this was followed with another great international success in 1911, “Eva.” I think this must have been a particular success in the Spanish-speaking world because there are a number of different Spanish recordings of it. But I though, you can see the original cast was, again, Louis Treumann, and another big star, Louise Kartousch. But I’m going to play you an extract with the great Lotte Lehmann who was, of course, a dramatic soprano, she sang Wagner. But I wanted to play you this because it’s just so sumptuously gorgeous. Her voice is just so… Puccini said her voice was as sweet as honey, and she was also very famous for the beauty of her spoken German. Somebody in the comments a couple of weeks ago said that they were coming round to finding German a beautiful language. And it certainly sounds beautiful when it’s like this.

• The First World War was, of course, a huge cultural shock, and many of the artists whose work had really blossomed before the war found the new world very harsh and very difficult to operate in. That’s true of Rachmaninoff, it’s true of Elgar, it’s true of Sibelius. They struggled to find inspiration after the First World War. And it was true of Lehar as well. And he seemed to really have run out of ideas. And then, he met Richard Tauber, and Tauber’s artistry and his voice inspired a late flowering in Lehar’s work. And this meeting happened in a rather interesting way. Lehar had written an operetta called “Frasquita” and it was staged at the Theatre an der Wien in 1922, and it was moderately but not very successful. Then one day, Tauber went to it and he thought, “Hmm, I could really do something with this.” The box office was dropping, dropping, dropping. And Tauber said, “Can I take over the tenor role?” Of course, they were absolutely astonished. This world-famous operatic tenor, famous for Mozart. Why would he want to take over a role in a failing operetta? But he did, and suddenly the theatre was a sell-out and it was a huge, huge success. And it was one particular song, “Serenade” from “Frasquita,” that he just made utter magic out of. And here it is.

SONG BEGINS

♪ When the moon is shining bright ♪ ♪ Through the darkness of the night ♪ ♪ Then I wait alone ♪ ♪ For love has flown ♪ ♪ And the music of the breeze ♪ ♪ As it wanders midst the trees ♪ ♪ Whispering this refrain ♪ ♪ All love is vain ♪ ♪ When the silent shadows fall ♪ ♪ And the darkness covers all ♪ ♪ Distant echoes sigh ♪ ♪ Goodbye, goodbye ♪ ♪ And the message of the dawn ♪ ♪ As it steal across the lawn ♪ ♪ Falls on dale and dell ♪ ♪ Farewell my love, farewell ♪

SONG ENDS

• Now that became the first Tauberlied, and from then on, of course, that was not specifically written for him, but in all the subsequent operettas, every single one of them after this by Lehar was written specifically for Tauber, and there was always the Tauberlied. And this would be a hit number, and Tauber was expected to encore it three, four, five times. And people were astonished by this, because every time he repeated it, he would sing it totally differently. He would practically recreate the song four or five times in a row with putting a pianissimi or fortissimi in different places with totally different phrasing. So here are two of the roles that were written for him, Paganini on the left-hand side, Friederike on the right-hand side. But the biggest hit of all came in 1929 with “The Land of Smiles.” And of course, the song that is always associated with Tauber, which is, “You are my Heart’s Delight.” Now that it was put on at the Komische Oper in Berlin, so an opera house, not really an operetta theatre, and, again, it was a smash success. It travelled all around the world. And the following year, it was the very first full-length sound movie made in Germany in 1930 was “Das Land des Lachelns,” “The Land of Smiles.” And it’s very primitively made, but it’s really fascinating, and you can see it on YouTube, you can see parts of it on YouTube. What is so interesting is that at this point in 1930, the Germans, or actually nobody, had really worked out how to do effective dubbing. So the very first sound movies are actually recordings of live performances. And so that is really fascinating to see, to see and hear Tauber in a live performance. This is not from the soundtrack of the movie. This is the commercial record he made at the time with Lehar conducting.

• So the last operetta that Lehar wrote was “Giuditta,” and he achieved a lifetime’s ambition, really, in having this piece premiered at the State Opera in Vienna. That was a tremendous, tremendous honour for an operetta composer. It’s quite an ambitious piece and it’s unusual. People have been asking me how do you define operetta, and usually operetta is light-hearted and you expect an operetta to have a happy ending. This does not have a happy ending and it’s actually really quite an operatic operetta. But I’m going to play you the end of the Tauberlied from “Giuditta,” “Du bist meine Sonne,” and both times with Tauber singing and both times with Lehar conducting. But first of all, we’re going to hear the commercial recording that they made of this piece.

• Now we’re going to hear an encore recorded live in the Staatsoper in Vienna with Lehar conducting with , of course, and ending it totally differently. Now, Lehar was soon joined by several other operatic composers, most of whom had just one or two big successes, and this is Emmerich Kalman. He was Hungarian. Of course, he was really Hungarian to call him, Kalman Imre, And he makes a lot of use of his Hungarian roots. So there’s a strongly Hungarian gypsy flavour to a lot of his music. And his big breakthrough was in, actually during the First World War, 1915, with “Die Csardasfurstin,” “The Gypsy Princess.”

• The Nazis loved operetta. They rated it very, very highly because they hated jazz, and they thought of operetta as being an essentially Austro-German art form. So they were quite worried because after 1934, Lehar stopped composing, and pretty well all the other opera composers were Jewish, so what can we do about this? Kalman was a big friend of Admiral Horthy, and I know that Trudy’s talked a lot about him, many of you will have caught lectures on Hungary, and Horthy with great prescience, I mean he could see what was coming, and he said to Kalman, “I really think you should get out of here and go to America.” So Kalman did that, he left Hungary, he left Austria and he stopped in Paris before leaving, I think it was on the Normandy, he was certainly on a luxury liner, he left in great style, but while he was in Paris before leaving Europe, the Nazis sent emissaries to him.

And they said, “Look, we really need you. And we’re prepared to offer you honorary Aryan status to, if you will, stay in Germany.” Well, he was smart enough to realise that was a poison chalice, so he didn’t accept the offer, and he went to America. The other great, great hit of Kalman was “Grafin Mariza.” And this is post-First World War, it’s 1924, and it tells the story of a Hungarian aristocrat, or Viennese-Hungarian aristocrat, who has lost all his lands and property as a result of the war and he has to land up working for a living as a kind of a manager for a wealthy landowner. And in his big number in this is a song full of nostalgia for the Vienna that he’s lost and the life that he’s lost. It’s a really gorgeous piece, full of yearning, full of longing. And when I hear this, I always think of the fact that this was probably, “Grafin Mariza,” was the last stage performance that would have been heard by many thousands of German Jews, the ones who stayed behind, the ones who didn’t get out,. There was the so-called Judischer Kulturbund, I’m sure many of you have heard that. Jews couldn’t go to the normal theatres, couldn’t go to the opera house, they had their own theatre and their own performances with the Judischer Kulturbund, and they performed dozens of performances of “Grafin Mariza” up to, even into the Second World War, up to, I think, 1941. So here is that song full of nostalgia and full of yearning.

• My first encounter with Kalman was in the early 1980s when Sadler’s Wells staged “Gypsy Princess” and “Grafin Mariza” and it was an incredible unforgettable experience because in 1980, those refugees who’d come here in the 1930s, many, many were still alive, and they packed the theatre and there was just, when those big tunes came up, there was just such a wave of emotion, and you could feel the audience swaying with the rhythm of these beautiful tunes. This is a photograph of Lerat with two of the, you could say, junior members of Silver Age of Operettas. There’s Oscar Straus on the left-hand side and Leo Fall on the right-hand side. Here is Leo Fall, born in Olmutz. And his big breakthrough was with, well, with the “Dollar Princess” and “Die geschiedene Frau.” Here you can see “La Divorcee,” rather a scandalous subject for before the First World War. But rather as Lehar tied his fortunes to Richard Tauber, Leo Fall tied his fortunes to Fritzi Massary, and he had his biggest successes with her. And one of them was “Madame Pompadour,” of course, the group celebrated Madame de Pompadour. And this is a duet from that, that Massary sings with her husband Max Pallenberg and she is, Madame de Pompadour in this is trying to seduce a handsome young man called Joseph and she’s tickling him in order to seduce him.

• Here is the great Fitzi with her limousine in Berlin, you can see that in the background as she was, I suppose, towards the end of the Weimar period. Now the last composer I’m going to talk about is Oscar Straus, and he was quite controversial from the start and he made his name with a piece called “Die Lustigen Nibelungen,” which was taking the piss out of Wagner’s “Ring,” and, of course, that really upset a lot of people that Deutsch Nationale, the right-wing German nationalists who were the predecessors of the Nazis. They protested, and he became a figure of hate. But he had his breakthrough in 1909 with an operetta called “Ein Walzertraum,” “A Waltz Dream.” It’s a kind of standard operetta plot about the misalliance between an aristocratic officer and a young lady who’s the leader of a woman’s orchestra.

• His other great hit before the First World War was “Der Tapfere Soldat,” which was translated as “The Chocolate Soldier.” And rather improbably, this is based on George Bernard Shaw’s “Arms and the Man,” because he had to ask permission from Shaw to use it, and Shaw was completely mystified by it. He couldn’t imagine how anybody could turn his play into an operetta, and he refused to take any money from it. He said, “Well, you can use it if you like as long as you don’t mention my name and it has nothing to do with me.” So actually Shaw, he was really chagrined when it turned into a huge international success and it made a fortune for Oscar Strauss and not a penny for George Bernard Shaw. So when in the 1940s MGM wanted to make a film of it, they had once again to go to Shaw to ask permission. And this time he asked so much money, he asked a completely unrealistic sum of money and Louis B. Mayer said to him, “What is this? I mean why are you being so unreasonable about this?” And Shaw said to Louis B. Mayer, “Mr. Mayer, I have to tell you the difference between us is that you are an artist and I am a businessman.” So in fact they had to make a new plot because they couldn’t use, they used Oscar Straus’s music, but they created a new plot around it. And here is the hit number from “The Chocolate Soldier,” from the movie.

SONG BEGINS

♪ I have a true and noble lover ♪ ♪ He is my sweetheart, all my own ♪ ♪ His like on Earth, who shall discover ♪ ♪ His heart is mine and mine alone ♪ ♪ We pledged our troth each to the other ♪ ♪ And for our happiness, I pray ♪ ♪ Our lives belong to one another ♪ ♪ Oh, happy, happy wedding day ♪ ♪ Oh, happy, happy wedding day ♪ ♪ Come, come, I love you only ♪ ♪ My heart is true ♪ ♪ Come, come, my life is lonely ♪ ♪ I long for you ♪ ♪ Come, come, naught can efface you ♪ ♪ My arms are aching now to embrace you ♪

SONG ENDS

• I had to move on, ‘cause I’m running out of time, ad there’s one more thing that I must play you. Here is the great Fritzi Massary, again, on the right hand side. This is after the premiere of another Oscar Straus’ piece called “Eine Frau, Die Weiss, Was Sie Will,” “A Woman Who Knows What She Wants.” And this was written as a vehicle for the great Fritzi Massary and it was premiered in December 1932. Was a huge, huge hit but obviously it was shut down within weeks after the Nazi takeover at the beginning of the following year. And this is, I want to play you this song from it called “Warum Soll Eine Frau Kein Verhältnis Haben?”, “Why Shouldn’t a Woman Have an Affair?” And it’s got wonderfully naughty, naughty words. Actually, this I took from a programme at the Wigmore Hall when Felicity Lott sang it. And I was amused to see that actually the words of the original were really too much for a modern audience and they had to change it. Whereas it’s a song about gossip, about women who’ve had extramarital affairs. And just over halfway down you’ll see, This woman has had a lion hunter as a lover and after that she was looking for a man with medals, but if you actually listen to what Fritzi Massary sings, she sings something quite different, and I think I’ll just leave it to those who speak good German to work that one out.

• And that last little, , that also has some quite interesting connotations which are not in the English translation. So that’s it and I’m going to see what we’ve got for comments.

Q&A and Comments:

Thank you, thank you, Jennifer, that’s lovely. And yeah, and Wendy, of course, is… Well, she’s fond of all of this, let’s face it, that’s wonderful. Let me see.

One of the most popular operettas in Leningrad Theatre for many years and probably is… I’m sorry, I think I’ve missed something there. Maybe it’s jumped. What’s gone here… Text translation to Russian. Metropolitan Opera did a superb job of “Merry Widow,” updating spoken dialogue. Renee Fleming, I’m sure she was very good as “Merry Widow,” suit her.

Mary Garden? I don’t think so. I think you’ve got it wrong there, Herbert. I don’t think Mary Garden ever recorded in anything in German. I do have her complete recordings.

Q: “Is that Waleha wearing medals?”

A: Yes, he is. He got lots and lots of medals.

Q: “Was he a left-handed conductor?”

A: I’m not sure about that.

Yes, this is like having a, of course, operetta, it’s like a box of chocolates, isn’t it?

The singer in the first act, it wasn’t what the one, I’m sorry, on my list. It should have been Thomas Hampson, that’s on my list, but the sound level was so low, people have been complaining about that, that at the last minute I substituted Rudolf Schock, who’s not a singer I usually like, but I think he’s okay in that.

Q: Is it true that Tauber refused to sing in German?

A: No, it’s not true. He sang in German, he sang in English while in England during the war, because he wasn’t allowed to sing in German. But one of the first things he did after the war, he met up with Lehar in Zurich and they spontaneously did a concert together and they put together a version of “You Are My Heart’s Delight,” and Taubert sang it in four languages. He sang it in English, French, German and Italian.

“Are you aware of…” Yeah, I had to watch them all, Abigail, because when I wrote my book on music in the Second World War, I sat down and I watched through all those Nazi musical movies, and they’re really extraordinary, what can I say, not necessarily in the best sense.

It’s come to my attention recently that “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” has a Shaw connection. Even after the war in New York City “West Side Story” apparently was first to illustrate a Jew and a non-Jew. That’s interesting. Thank you, Liane.

Q: “There was so much anti-German sentiment in the States. How was German opera?”

A: German operetta was immensely popular in America during the Second World War. And of course, there were all these operatic composers like Kalman, Robert Stoltz, and there were, as I said, hugely popular revivals of “The Merry Widow” and also of the Straus’ operettas in America.

Well, they weren’t sung in German, they were sung in English. Thank you, Susan.

Q: Did Offenbach invent the Can-Can?

A: No, he invented, well, he didn’t invent the dance, but you know, with the high kicking and the, you know, but he invented that music, of course, is his original music.

No, Joseph Schmidt. No, I didn’t. I love Joseph Schmidt, but I’m thinking I might do a whole session on Joseph Schmidt. So confused about the distinctions. If you are, so am I. I think so everybody is.

Q: “Could it be Shaw didn’t want to be associated with Oscar Straus’ version?”

A: No, I don’t think that’s probably true, but of course, I know Shaw was anti-Semitic, and that joke I told you, it could have, where I think there was maybe a little dig, an anti-Semitic dig at Mr. Mayer, Louis B. Mayer. Big three with, for missing,

Q: “Were you thinking of completing the big three, France with Offenbach, Austria with Straus and Lehar?”

A: Well, I’d have to find the right context because I certainly, when we do France again, would like to do more Offenbach. I mean, I’d like to do a whole session on the tales of Hoffman and much more Offenbach, he’s one of my biggest heroes. Gilbert and Sullivan, I could do, but I mean, that would have to fit into the context of an English series.

Q: “Was the title, ‘A Woman Who Knows What She Wants’ a play on Freud’s question, what does a woman want?”

A: You know, I never thought of that. That’s quite interesting. I wonder. Sigmund Romberg, he certainly fits into this. But, you know, lack of space, lack of time. I’m glad you were cheered up. That’s what I really wanted to do. “Die Csardasfurstin” of course, actually it was originally, it may have been, I’m sure it’s been translated into Hungarian, but the original of “Die Csardasfurstin” was in German. As always, thank you very much, thank you, lovely comments.

Where do we go? Thank you. I’m glad you like it as much as I do. This took the Operetta House on the Reeperbahn. Lots, of course, Budapest has an Operetta House, although they mainly do American musicals these days. Thank you, Barbara.

“Chocolate Soldier” Movie. No, it’s not Jeanette McDonald. It is Nelson Eddy. It is… God, what’s her name? It was actually on the screen. She, you know, big star, mezzo of the Metropolitan Opera. Glad.

Oh, Miriam, I’m so glad. I love to make you cry. I guess I remember Chocolates, it’s not Jeanette McDonald, no. It’s… Oh, she was a very famous Carmen. Why can’t I remember? She should be on my list. Rise Stevens, Rise Stevens. Remember, this is Greta , her father, let me think, was a popular melodist during World War II. Yeah.

Yes, I mean, Tauber, God, what can I say?* He’s such a genius. I just think Tauber is, you know, he’s so special. And Joseph Schmidt is a wonderful singer too in a different kind of way. Actually, Tauber was such a nice man. I think there was a concert where Schmidt sang and Talbot conducted. They were good friends with one another.

So that seems to be the end. And so still I hope to appeal to those with a musical sweet tooth on Wednesday with my next talk which is on Erich Korngold.