Luxembourg Waltzes

on tunes from The Count of Luxembourg

Franz Lehár’s first popular success as a composer in Vienna - which encouraged him to give up his day job as a military bandmaster - was the Gold and Silver Waltz. His next, putting even Johann Strauss in the shade, was his operetta The Merry Widow, which was first performed at the Theater an der Wien in 1905. The Count of Luxembourg, written for the same Viennese theatre four years later, was clearly intended to appeal to the same audience - which it did, in a big way. It too is set in Paris and features an idle young Count who has the luck, rather than the guile, to end up with the woman he loves.

Having recklessly spent the family fortune, René Count of Luxembourg is living with a painter friend in Montmartre and is so short of money that when the Russian Prince Basil Basilowitsch offers him 500,000 francs to go through a form of marriage with a singer called Angèle Didier he willingly accepts without even seeing her. Since the whole point is that by marrying him Angèle becomes a Countess and will then, after a quick divorce, be entitled to marry Prince Basil, he can see no harm and only profit in the scheme. What he does not foresee is that, although there is to be a partition between them at the ceremony, as they exchange vows and rings through a gap in the screen he and Angèle will fall in love with each other. In the end of course, after much unlikely good fortune, Angèle and René become a real married couple and Basil marries a real Countess.

One of the most attractive numbers in the whole work is a slow waltz song “Tell me, can this be love?” sung by René and Angèle as they begin to realise, though they still haven’t seen each other, what is happening to them on their respective sides of the screen. It is featured in the Overture and it is also the main theme of the Luxembourg Waltzes, a medley of the best waltz tunes put together by Lehár himself to capitalise on the Viennese public’s unfailing demand for its favourite dance form. Introduced by a brisk little march, “Tell me, can this be love” is not only the first waltz to be heard but is also the one which, after the intervention of three other waltz tunes, reappears to be worked to a climax just before the end.

Gerald Larner©2003