“Waltz while you may” from The Land of Smiles

Set largely in China, The Land of Smiles doesn’t seem a very likely choice of libretto for a composer writing for an audience which he knows is expecting a good proportion of Viennese waltzes. 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. The most memorable of the walzes comes from the one Viennese act, which is set at the ball where Lisa first meets Sou-Chong. Lehár would recognise it as the slightly wistful “Gern, gern wär ich verliebt” which he wrote for Lisa in 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 Das Land des Lächelns libretto, The Land of Smiles, by Harry Graham.