The Merry Widow

The Merry Widow Composed by Franz LeharLibretto by Victor Leon & Leo Stein, after a play by Henri MeilhacFirst performed at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, December 30, 1905.

Vienna at the start of the Twentieth Century was an exciting place of new ideas, a city of two million seething with creativity and change. But the hearts of the Viennese were still captivated by the bubbly music of its operettas, first popularized by Johann Strauss Jr, who led Viennese operetta into its golden age with Die Fledermaus in 1874.

By good fortune, the librettists for The Merry Widow commissioned the then-unknown Franz Lehar to write the score. The result met with growing acclaim soon after its premier, so much so that it led to an international Merry Widow fad and ushered in a silver age of operetta. Burnaby Lyric Opera and The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts are pleased to present a centenary production of this beloved work.

The story is set in Paris, at the embassy of the fictional Balkan nation of Pontevedro (actually a thinly-disguised Montenegro). Pontevedrian envoy Baron Zeta is concerned that Hanna Glawari, a widow whose husband had been the richest man in Pontevedro, will marry a foreigner, thus removing her fortune from the destitute country. His solution is to urge the very eligible embassy secretary, Count Danilo, to marry her, but there's a complication: Danilo and Hanna had once been lovers, but a marriage had been derailed by her "unsuitability" in the eyes of Danilo's uncle. Thus, Danilo, fickle in his relationships and reluctant to be seen to marry for money, spends his nights drinking and flirting with the grisettes at Maxim's.

In addition to its familiar waltz melodies, marches, and can-can, The Merry Widow displays plenty of Eastern European color with a Balkan kolo and its most well-known piece, the folksong-like Vilja.