Konzert zum Jahreswechsel

Franz Lehár
Overture to The Merry Widow
Music from the operettas Friederike, Paganini, and Giuditta

With Franz Lehár, the Viennese operetta experienced a remarkable revival in the early decades of the 20th century. This new flourishing period, known as the “Silver Age,” owed its success not only to the immensely popular The Merry Widow but also to Lehár’s later operettas from the 1920s and early 1930s, in which he consciously approached the realm of grand opera. These works are both ambitious and sophisticated, often featuring prominent figures from cultural history, such as the “devil’s violinist” Niccolò Paganini or the “prince of poets” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who appears in the operetta Friederike. With Giuditta, described as a “musical comedy,” Lehár even achieved a premiere at the Vienna State Opera. In his music, melodic richness and melancholy merge in a uniquely captivating way.