Paganini: ”Liebe du Himmel auf Erden” (Love, Heaven on Earth)

Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow): “Viljalied” (Vilja Song)

The most successful of all Lehár’s operettas - the most successful of all Viennese operettas next to Die Fledermaus - was, and still is, Die lustige Witwe (“The Merry Widow”), which was first performed in Vienna in 1905. He scored many other hits, however, not least with Paganini in 1925. Based on an entirely imaginary episode in the life of the legendary violinist, it was the first of several Lehár operettas written with Richard Tauber in mind as the leading tenor. One of its most celebrated numbers, however, is for a soprano, the Princess who falls in love with Paganini and who, as she makes quite clear in ”Liebe du Himmel auf Erden”, is most reluctant to lose him. Although the operetta is set in Lucca in the early nineteenth century, no one in Vienna in the early twentieth would have been surprised to hear Princess Anna Elisa pouring her hear out in a Viennese waltz song.