German operetta in the West End and on Broadway

Anyone studying the reception of German operettas in Britain and America is bound to recognise that the productions in the West End and on Broadway of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow mark a new phase. Before The Merry Widow, the last German operetta to hold the stage successfully in both London and New York had been Carl Zeller’s Der Vogelhändler. It became The Tyrolean at the Casino Theatre, New York, in October 1891, and The Bird-seller at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, four years later. Wiener Blut, an operetta of 1899 based on arrangements of the music of Johann Strauss Jr, was produced on Broadway as Vienna Life in early 1901, but had no outing in London. The stage works of Paul Lincke, credited as the founder of Berlin operetta, took time to travel. His ensemble song ‘Glühwürmchen’ from Lysistrata was familiar as an orchestral piece in London, but his operetta Frau Luna, popular in Germany, was not produced in London until 1911, and not produced at all in New York. The gaze of theatre managers at the fin de siècle was fixed firmly on Viennese productions. In December 1905, Victor Léon and Leo Stein’s adaptation of Henri Meilhac’s L’Attaché d’Ambassade as Die lustige Witwe, set to music by Franz Lehár, opened with great success at the Theater an der Wien; in May the next year it was at the Berliner Theater, and a year later it was performed as The Merry Widow at Daly’s Theatre, London, and the New Amsterdam Theatre, New York. The English version, by Basil Hood and Adrian Ross, was used for both. The London production opened on 8 June 1907 and ran for a remarkable 778 performances. The New York production opened on 21 October that year and notched up 416 performances. The massive success of The Merry Widow opened up a flourishing market for Viennese operetta in these cities. This was confirmed by the huge success of Oscar Straus’s The Chocolate Soldier in New York in 1909 and London the following year.