SCO Viennese 2008

Offenbach’s Siege of Vienna

In the middle of the nineteenth century Vienna was the undisputed capital of the waltz. No other city could even begin to threaten its supremacy. As Johann I, the founder of the Strauss dynasty, had developed it and as his eldest son Johann II had by about 1860 perfected it, the Viennese waltz had its own sophisticated form and a distinctive style which, far from taxing a composer’s melodic resources, seemed both to multiply and refine them.

Outside the ballroom, however, in the musical theatre, Vienna was under threat. From the mid-1850s Offenbach operettas had been imported from Paris, often in pirated versions, and had become so popular that within a few years Offenbach himself was presenting his latest works in Vienna as soon as they had been seen in Paris. His success, like his income, was enormous. In 1865, for example, La belle Hélène was given no fewer than 65 performances at the Theater an der Wien – an iconic centre of Austrian culture where operas as distinguished as Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Beethoven’s Fidelio had first seen the light of day. “Here the war cry is Offenbach for ever!” the composer reported from Vienna. And it wasn’t only Offenbach: composers like Adam, Boieldieu and Lecocq were cashing in too.

It was a situation which no self-respecting Viennese composer with a living to make could tolerate but, in spite of the often inspired efforts of Franz von Suppé at the Carltheater and the Theater an der Wien, none of them could turn back the tide from Paris. It wasn’t until Johann Strauss II resigned his post as Director of Music to the Imperial Court Balls to devote himself to the musical theatre that Vienna had a hope of repelling the French invasion. It took several years to do it but, once Strauss had demonstrated the superiority of his art with his third operetta, Die Fledermaus, at the Theater an der Wien in 1874, Viennese music was on the way to winning the same kind of supremacy in the operetta theatre as it had long enjoyed in the ballroom. After Johann II’s death in 1899, Franz Lehár, the most successful of the Viennese composers who followed him, sustained the tradition through the first three decades of the twentieth century – admitting more trendy dance styles as they became popular but always retaining the waltz as the major attraction.

Franz von Suppé (1819-1895)

Light Cavalry (Die leichte Kavallerie): Overture

When Franz von Suppé started working in the theatre, as an unpaid assistant conductor at the Theater in der Josefstadt in 1840, Viennese operetta as we know it did not exist. It would not exist, in fact, until 1860 when, challenged by the overwhelming popularity of the Offenbach operettas recently imported from Paris, he wrote Das Pensionat – which is certainly not the best known of its kind but was probably the first. He went on to write dozens more, including Die schöne Galathea in 1865, Fatinitza in 1876 and Bocaccio (”the greatest success of my life”) in 1879. If many of them are now remembered only by their overtures, it is not so much because the operettas are so very inferior as because the overtures are so very good.

Suppé demonstrated his mastery of the overture an an early stage in his career in Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna in 1844. The Light Cavalry Overture, written for a two-act comic opera at the Carltheater 22 years later, is one of the most popular of all his compositions. Not surprisingly, it makes a special feature of military material, from the ceremonial fanfares that open and close the piece to the brilliant trumpet gallop associated in the operetta with a cavalry ride across the Hungarian plains. The Hungarian setting also allowed Suppé to indulge a characteristic Viennese taste for Hungarian flavouring, as in the lively dance that opens the main section of the overture and the passionate melody for lower strings introduced by a clarinet cadenza in the middle.

Franz Lehár (1870-1948)

Gold and Silber Waltz

Thanks to the success of Suppé and others in countering the Offenbach invasion, operetta became big business for composers in Vienna – not least for Johann Strauss II who, for the last 28 years of his life, devoted the major part of his creative activity to writing music for the stage. Franz Lehár, a Hungarian by birth, arrived in Vienna a couple of years after Strauss’s death, which was perfect timing for a musician with the genius not only to succeed him but even surpass him as a composer of operetta.

He established his reputation first in the ballroom, however, with a waltz which, written for a ball with a “gold and silver” theme at the Sofiensaal in the 1902, reflected a new taste with the dancing public. Demand for the characteristically vertiginous one-in-a-bar waltz cultivated by the Strauss family was waning in favour of something more sensuous and more romantic, something that swayed rather than swirled. While it contains some glitteringly lively episodes too, the gliding melodic style of the Gold und Silber Waltz was just what was required. Three years later Lehár wrote The Merry Widow which includes, among the highlights that were to make it the most successful of all Viennese operettas, an even more sentimental waltz.

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)

“Amours divins” from La belle Hélène

“Ah, que j’aime les militaires” from La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein

A good idea of the range of the Offenbach inspiration that Viennese composers had to compete with is provided by extracts from two of his most successful operettas, La belle Hélène and La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, which were seen in Vienna only a few weeks after their first performances in Paris in 1864 and 1867 respectively. From near the beginning of La belle Hélène – a satirical version of an episode in the life of Helen of Troy – “Amours divins” is addressed by Helen to Venus who, after the death of her mortal lover Adonis, seems to have banished love from the world. At this point she hasn’t yet met Paris, who is about to abduct her from Sparta to Troy, but it is clear from an aria of near-operatic status that she is going to fall in love with someone sooner rather than later.

“Ah, que j’aime les militaires,” a prominent highlight of La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, represents the other extreme of Offenbach’s inspiration. It’s a brilliant rondeau to which the Grande Duchesse herself, a thinly disguised caricature of Catherine the Great, makes her first entry and, with unashamed enthusiasm, declares her definitive liking for brave and smartly turned-out soldiery.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Emperor Waltz (Kaiser-Walzer), Op.437

The Emperor Waltz is not only a great piece of music but also a great piece of diplomacy. It was written to celebrate the historic state visit made by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in Berlin in 1889 and was given its grand but neutral title so as to offend neither emperor and to flatter them both. Imperial in inspiration, it is also imperial in stature. The introduction takes the form of a delicately scored march, while the first of the waltz tunes – briefly anticipated in march time before its definitive introduction in waltz time on horn and violins – must be the most dignified of its kind. Although none of the following three waltzes is quite as stately, trumpets and trombones certainly make an imposing entry in the last but one of them. Not satisfied with a recapitulation of almost symphonic proportions, recalling the second and third waltzes as well as the main theme itself, Strauss adds an epilogue featuring a thoughtful solo cello and a brilliantly ceremonial ending.

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)

arranged by Manuel Rosenthal (1904-2003)

Can-can from Gaîté parisienne

In the few hours he had to spare in a career industriously devoted to operetta – he wrote not far short of a hundred opéras bouffes and opéras comiques – Offenbach found time for just four ballets. Gaîté parisienne is not one of them. That score was put together more than fifty years after his death by the French composer and conductor Manuel Rosenthal for the Ballet russe de Monte Carlo. It consists of twenty or so numbers drawn from some of the more popular of Offenbach’s operettas, La Vie parisienne most prominent among them, brilliantly rescored and arranged to fit a story set in a fashionable but somewhat disreputable Parisian nightspot. A frothy celebration of Second Empire naughtiness, with a libretto by Count Etienne de Beaumont and choreography by Léonide Massine, it was first performed at the Opéra de Monte Carlo in 1938 and was an immediate success (so much so that Warner Bros produced a film version only three years later under the then unproblematic title of The Gay Parisian). Tantalisingly held in reserve until near the end of the ballet (and the film) is a vertiginous galop alluding to the famous can-can from Orphée aux enfers and its even more exuberant counterpart in La vie parisienne.

Johann Strauss II

By the Beautiful Blue Danube (An der schönen blauen Donau) Waltz, Op.314

The Blue Danube waltz is not only the last word in flattery – the Danube in Vienna is a muddy brown in most lights – but also the ultimate example of the concert waltz. In company with some of the most distinguished examples of its kind, it consists of as many as five distinct waltz-time sections, each one of them based on two different themes. Clearly, as the composer of well over a hundred waltzes (not including those in his operettas), Johann II was a uniquely resourceful melodist. Written for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association in 1867, this most familiar of Viennese waltzes was originally scored for chorus and orchestra and in that form it has achieved something like the status of a national anthem. The choral version, however, doesn’t have the splendid coda which in the orchestral version recalls and briefly develops the main themes of four of the five sections, referring back to the leisurely introduction and effortlessly completing a perfectly integrated construction. It flows just as easily as the Danube itself, and far more colourfully.

Johann Strauss II

“Danube, river of dreams” from The Gypsy Baron

If Johann Strauss could be here today he would be flattered, amazed and bewildered. He would be flattered that his music (and that of his father and brothers) is still so popular in the 21st century. He would be amazed that, following a tradition that began in Vienna in 1939, it is performed as a regular part of New Year celebrations all over the world. While still flattered, he would be bewildered by what extraordinary things can happen to his music in these events. The melody of what is being presented here today as “Danube, river of my dreams” he would recognise as a waltz song, “Als flotter Geist,” from one of his most successful operettas Der Zigeunerbaron. But he would probably remember that he wrote it for the entrance of his tenor hero Barinkay, the “gypsy baron” of the title. He would surely agree, however, that whether it is sung by a tenor in German or a mezzzo-soprano in English (to words that have little to do with the original), the tune retains its irresistible zest and its authentic Viennese waltz-time style.

Franz Lehár

“Waltz while you may” from The Land of Smiles

An operetta set largely in China – “the land of smiles” – doesn’t seem a very likely vehicle for a composer writing for a Viennese audience which he knows is expecting a good proportion of waltzes in the score. In fact, while he supplies appropriately exotic material for some of the scenes in Prince Sou-Chong’s palace in Peking, he contrives to introduce no fewer than seven waltzes, together with a foxtrot or two, into the work as a whole. One of the most delightful of the waltzes, however, comes from the one Viennese act, which is set at the ball where Lisa first meets Sou-Chong. Lehár would recognise it as the wistful “Gern, gern wär ich verliebt” which he wrote for Das Land des Lächelns in 1923. On this occasion it is sung to the anything but wistful words “Waltz while you may” from an English version of the libretto, The Land of Smiles, by Harry Graham.

Josef Strauss (1827–1870)

Die Libelle (The Dragonfly) Polka-mazurka, Op.204

If Josef Strauss had not been plagued by illness, which resulted in his death at the age of 43, and if he had been as ambitious as his brothers Johann and Eduard, he might well have turned out the greatest composer of the three – not necessarily of dances but of more ambitious forms of music. Even so, he was a brilliant exponent of the polka, including the hybrid form the polka-mazurka, which ingeniously combines the duple-time polka step with the uneven triple-time of the mazurka. Die Liebelle, with its prettily scored main theme, is an attractive example of Josef’s melodic sensitivity.

Johann Strauss II

Memories of Covent Garden (Erinnerung an Covent Garden) Waltz, Op.329

Wherever he went on his travels – and he travelled far and wide – Johann II liked to amuse his audience with pieces specially written to include some local or topical reference. On his one and only visit to London in 1867 he gave the first performance of what he called “a new festival valse comique on popular melodies.” So as not to spoil your fun in identifying them the titles of the six tunes he incorporated in the piece are appended below. They are all music-hall songs – popular at the time and in some cases still familiar today – subtly persuaded into waltz-time rhythms.

Johann Strauss II

Thunder and Lightning (Unter Donner und Blitz) Polka, Op.324

The theory that the most famous of all Strauss polkas was first performed under the title Sternschnuppe (Shooting Star) is difficult to accept. The music – with its drumrolls, its rumbling basses, its brilliant flashes of cymbal and piccolo sound, its general impression of the heavens let loose – is so appropriate to its present Thunder and Lightning title that is scarcely credible that it could have been conceived with any other scenario in mind.

Gerald Larner ©2008

The music-hall songs in Memories of Covent Garden are: Champagne Charlie, The Flying Trapeze, The Mousetrap Man, Beautiful Nell, Sweet Isabella, Home Sweet Home.