SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Lehár, The Merry Widow:  Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the English National Opera. London Coliseum, 1.5.2008  (JPr)

John Graham-Hall (Danilo Danilowitsch) & Amanda Roocroft (Hanna Glawari)

The history of The Merry Widow is interesting because it is based on Henri Meilhac’s 1861 French comedy L'attaché d'ambassade (The Embassy Attaché.) The play  had a certain Baron Scharpf, the Parisian ambassador of an impoverished German duchy needing to arrange a marriage between his country's richest widow, Madeline von Palmer, and embassy attaché Count Prachs : thereby staving off economic disaster in their homeland. The original Paris production at the Théâtre du Vaudeville  lasted only 15 performances but a German adaptation was better received and was revived from time to time. In early 1905 it came to the attention of librettist Leo Stein who considered it  a potentially successful operetta and took it to his occasional collaborator Victor Léon.

Vienna’s Theater an der Wien had not had a great hit since Der Opernball (The Opera Ball) before the end of the nineteenth century. The theatre manager Wilhelm Karczag was looking for a new operetta with a Parisian setting, and a musical version of Der Gesandschafts Attaché sounded like a good idea. Short of funds and without a Graham Norton BBC casting show to create cheap publicity, the management kept their investment in Die lustige Witwe, as the operetta was now titled, to a minimum by using old sets and costumes. Mentioning Meilhac's original play would have meant paying rights fees so it was originally described as ‘partly based on a foreign source’. The secondhand production had a first-rate cast however.  Veteran operetta performers, Mizzi Gunther and Louis Treumann were the first choices for Hannah Glawari and her once and future lover, Count Danilo. Like the composer, the two stars firmly believed Die lustige Witwe would succeed. Gunther paid for her own lavish costumes, and Treumann ordered a costly replica of a real prince's dress uniform. He was Crown Prince Danilo of Montenegro who had inspired the character’s name and whose country had been the librettists’ model for the impoverished Balkan state they renamed ‘Pontevedro’. Karczag was still uncertain whether it would make any money and offered Lehár 5000 crowns to shut down the production. In fact when Lehár first played the music to Karczag he found the melodies so unusual and the harmonies so lush that he commented ‘This isn’t music!’

Die lustige Witwe did eventually première on 30 December 1905 and contrary to popular belief was a smash hit because word of mouth soon ensured packed houses and its music was also performed in Vienna's cafes and concert halls, widening its appeal.  There were also considerable sheet music sales. It was enjoyed by Gustav and Alma Mahler and she reminisces that after they saw it the first time,  they ‘danced together when we got home and played Lehár’s waltz from memory; but the exact passage defied our utmost efforts’. Claiming they were too ‘highbrow’ to buy the music they went to a famous music shop in Vienna and while Mahler asked about the sale of his compositions Alma ‘turned the pages of the various piano editions of The Merry Widow, and found the passage I wanted. I sang it as soon as we were in the street in case it slipped my memory a second time.’

Quickly the operetta reached its 300th performance and the producers at last provided new sets and costumes and later, Lehár marked the 400th by adding a new overture. Strangely,  Lehár who had accepted the mantle of one Strauss (Johann) later in life collaborated like another famous composer of his generation, Richard Strauss, with the Nazis; Adolf Hitler had been a lifelong fan of The Merry Widow and awarded the composer the Goethe Medal. Lehár died in exile in Switzerland in 1948.

Full Stage Set with Amanda Roocroft (Centre)

In its golden years English National Opera performed this sort of music very well, had the singers with the style to sing it and directors who would stage it sympathetically. In 2008 then,  one out of three is the best we can expect but it was at least the one that meant it all looked good and was a masterly recreation of the Belle Époque of fin de siècle Paris. The sets were applauded as soon as the curtain went up. In perhaps the too safe hands of veteran opera director, John Copley (who replaced Jude Kelly at Christmas), and with Tim Reed's sets and Deirdre Clancy's costumes we have just the right milieu for flirtatious embassy wives in beautiful gowns, waiters who rush in carrying bottles and do somersaults and fairly modestly dressed can-can dancers straight from Toulouse-Lautrec’s brightly coloured nightclub paintings who spiritedly kick up a storm and do the splits. The Pontevedrians are upperclass workshy English with cut-glass accents drinking champagne by the magnum and the French have outrageous accents straight out of the long-running sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo.

Xenophobia is never far away most notably in Roy Hudd’s Act III patter song ‘Très, Très, Très Français’ and as Njegus he ended up complete with beret, bicycle and garland of onions. This was sung to original music Lehár interpolated into the 1907 London production but was given new lyrics by Jeremy Sams. Admittedly,  to see the veteran vaudevillian Roy Hudd, at the old London Coliseum, once a famous music hall, was one of the delights of the evening. His comic timing showed up the lack of it in those around him.

To be honest,  Act I did not work too well as the singers were either too far on one side of the stage or being rushed in and out of doors French-farce style. It was difficult to keep hearing Pontevedro as the ‘Fatherland’ as that has other connotations and the translation was a little prosaic ‘It might have been better if I had not met you’ and ‘Being sycophantic isn’t very romantic’ gives an idea of how it was. In fact it less resembled operetta than the Marx Brothers’ opening scene in ‘Duck Soup’, the  basic premise of which also involves a bankrupt state and a dowager millionairess :  a ‘skit’ on that movie for this production might have made for a more unique evening. I enjoyed the other two Acts a great deal more and they seemed better rehearsed with a greater joie de vivre from the ensemble. Admittedly though, the Act II ‘concert party chorus line’ septet ‘Who can tell what the hell women are?’ was straight from another long-running British sitcom ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’.

Fiona Murphy (Valencienne)  & Alfie Boe (Camille de Rosillon)

A Gilbert and Sullivan specialist, Richard Suart, was a suitably buffoonish elderly Baron Zeta. I warmed very much to Alfie Boe’s ardent Camille who pursues Zeta’s young wife  Valencienne sung by Fiona Murphy and  undoubtedly the star singer of the evening, the one with the greatest sense of style. The weakness was the two principals; both of whom  gave fine performances in the end but without capturing the real essence of the genre. Danilo must be funny and moving, a raffish charmer, a bit like Leslie Phillips. Tall and gangly John Graham-Hall neither waltzed well enough nor sang elegantly enough when necessary. Amanda Roocroft’s Hanna Glawari had been clearly asked to overemphasise her northern vowels but she is not a great light comedian judging by this performance. She is an experienced singer for operatic tragic heroines and this seems to have taken a toll on her voice which lacked the flexibility and secure top notes  that her Act II ‘Vilja’ demands. As a result it was not the showstopper it should be.

Oliver von Dohnanyi’s conducting of his exemplary orchestra seemed to be overemphasising the music rather too much, the production in Act I was perhaps was not intimate enough and neither was his accompaniment throughout the evening. In operetta,  the words tell the story and the music just underlines the emotional atmosphere. Here unnecessarily grand statements appeared to be attempted and there was too little Viennese schwung. Perhaps he will relax a bit more as the run of performances continues.

I did enjoy this unashamedly old-fashioned evening well enough however. Viennese operetta performed like this, is an innocent and somewhat innocuous diversion for an opera company getting the unworthy reputation of having most of their productions involving scenes in a washroom. But operetta is a diversion from real life too which should draw you into a fantasy world of romantic comedy and then steal your heart away. I have seen operetta in Vienna and memorably many years ago with ENO and to be performed correctly it needs sufficient artists of personal charisma and vocal beauty to bring these hackneyed yet well-loved old tunes to life. The mix was just not completely right here.

Jim Pritchard

All Pictures © Clive Barda

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