Austrian concert programme — Heuberger, Dostal, Zeller & Lehár

Richard Heuberger (1850-1914)

Der Opernball: “Im chambre séparée” (1898)

Nico Dostal (1895-1981)

Die Vielgeliebte: “Du nur bist das Glück meines Lebens” (1933)

Carl Zeller (1842-1898)

Der Vogelhändler: “Ich bin die Christel von der Post” (1891)

Franz Lehár (1870-1948)

Der Zarewitsch: “Einer wird kommen” (1927)

Giuditta : “Meine Lippen sie küssen so heiss” (1934)

Viennese operetta thrived in its prime - let’s say from the birth of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus in 1874 until the beginning of the First World War - on an insatiable demand for waltz songs set in romantic or erotic situations. Indeed, as Franz Lehár’s long waltz-time career clearly demonstrates, it sustained Viennese musical theatre for decades after that. In the years round the turn of the nineteenth century, not only after Strauss’s death but also after he had upgraded his ambitions to the operatic level, the popular demand for operetta with good tunes was such that anyone who could write a passable waltz had a chance of acquiring a little fame and fortune.

Even music critics tried their hand at it. Richard Heuberger, who succeeded the formidable Hans Hanslick on the Neue freie Presse, actually proved to be quite successful in this line even if little of what he wrote is still heard today. Der Opernball (The Opera Ball), which was first performed at the Theater an der Wien in 1898, survives mainly on the undying appeal of its best waltz number, “Im chambre séparée.” Although Der Opernball is clearly an attempt to emulate Die Fledermaus - it is set at a midnight ball in the Paris Opera House - “Im chambre séparée” is quite different from the standard Strauss waltz. Appropriately for a French maidservant in disguise inviting the object of her amorous intentions to drink champagne with her in one of the opera house’s private rooms, it is a seductive slow waltz very much in the Parisian manner.

After the First World War the centre of operetta in German tended to shift to Berlin. It was there that Nico Dostal, though thoroughly Austrian by birth and musical upbringing, set up a long career in Germany with Clivia in 1933, scoring a particular success with a “Spanish waltz” called “Am Manzanares.” The big hit of his next operetta, Die Vielgeliebte (The Much Beloved) was not a waltz however: “Du nur bist das Glück meines Lebens” is a sentimental example of his other speciality, the slow tango, written for his future wife Lillie Claus in the starring role of Dena Darlo.

Back in Vienna in the early 1890s, Carl Zeller was another part-time composer who, like Heuberger, stepped in to fill the gap in the operetta market vacated by Strauss. Der Vogelhändler (The Bird Seller), a rustic comedy set in the Rhineland in the eighteenth century, was the first of his two big successes, not least because of the village postmistress’s pert little entrance number “Ich bin dir Christel von der Post” with its post-chase introduction and it post-haste waltz refrain.

Franz Lehár’s Der Zarewitsch dates from the period when, though clearly old-fashioned in comparison with the jazz-influenced songs and dances imported from America, his operettas were sustained in their popularity by the regular participation of Richard Tauber in the leading roles. The first performance of Der Zarewitsch in Vienna in 1927, with Tauber as the Tsarevich and Jarmila Novotna as Sonja, was broadcast by now fewer than 120 radio companies. Set in St Petersburg at the end of the 19th century, it is a peculiar story about a Russian prince who, though he dislikes women, is going to have to marry for political reasons. In order to break him in gently the Grand Duke secretly arranges matters so that the Tsarevich gets to know a slim young dancer disguised - so that he won’t immediately reject her - as a Circassian officer. Einer wird kommen is what Sonja sings to herself as she wonders what the prince will be like and whether her rather dangerous mission will be successfully accomplished. In the end it is and it isn’t.

Giuditta is the opera that crowned Lehár’s long career in the musical theatre. Too serious to be termed an operetta and first performed on no less distinguished a stage than that of the Staatsoper in Vienna in 1934, it is Austria’s equivalent to Carmen. Its heroine, a dancer of mixed Spanish and Moroccan blood, is married to an elderly Spanish maker of bird cages. Not surprisingly, when invited by a handsome young army captain to accompany him to his garrison town in North Africa, she happily goes along with the idea. In the fourth scene, separated from her lover and unaware that he is in the audience, she is performing in a cabaret at the Alcazar. Only in a score by Lehár could a Spanish-Moroccan cabaret artist set out to seduce a rich English lord at the Alcazar with anything as unmistakably Viennese as “Meine Lippen, die küssen so heiss.” The North African local colour applied to the introduction does not disguise the place and time of origin of the slow waltz at the heart of the song.