The ambassador is promoting Count Danilo, a nephew of the Petrovenian king, but there’s a catch. The two were former lovers but Danilo’s parents nixed marriage because Hanna was poor. Now she’s wealthy beyond belief but Danilo’s pride prevents him from proposing. Besides, he loves his party-going bachelor life. He does, however, agree to sabotage the efforts of several gold-digging, high-class Parisian suitors. An affair between Baron Zeta’s wife Valencienne and Camille, a young French dandy, that includes an incriminating message scrawled on a lost fan, further complicates the situation.

ACT II

Hanna hosts a party at her villa. She sings a folk ballad (Vilja) about the love of a huntsman for a maiden of the woods. Baron Zeta learns that Camille is in love with a mystery woman but doesn’t suspect it’s his wife. A comedy of errors ensues with the fan as the pivotal prop. In the end, Hanna confounds everyone by announcing her engagement to Camille. Baron Zeta is furious. So is Danilo, who realizes his true feelings for Hanna. He heads for Maxim’s, his favorite cabaret, to drink his sorrows away. Watching Danilo’s reaction to her rejection of him, Hanna understands that Danilo truly loves her and this makes her happy indeed.

ACT III

The party and story continues to unfold at Maxim’s. Hanna’s engagement to Camille was a ruse, she explains, a made-up story to protect another woman’s reputation. Danilo is delighted but his straight arrow conscience about sharing in Hanna’s immense wealth continues to keep him from proposing. She then reveals that her late husband’s will states that if she remarries, she loses her fortune. When the money-hungry bachelors hear this, they totally lose interest, leaving Danilo free to propose with his pride intact. Hanna joyfully accepts. And surprise! The fortune Hanna forfeits if she remarries? The will says it goes instead to her new husband! The happiest ending imaginable.

- Performance notes by Eugene Carlson

Young Franz was sent to the Prague Conservatory at age 12, where he studied violin and was advised in composition by Antonín Dvořák. He wrote dances and marches and at age 16, his first opera.

He moved to Vienna in 1902, played in the band led by his father, and eventually succeeded him, the youngest bandmaster in the Austro-Hungarian army. With a gift for melody, especially memorable waltzes, his composing career also flourished. His operettas reflected the charm of traditional Vienna — sacher torte and kaffee mitt schlag - and nostalgia for the past at a time when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was in a long, slow decline.

His biggest success came early, at age 35, when he was asked to write the music for a libretto based on an old French comedy. The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe), a three-act comic romance, was a box office smash, a financial bonanza for Lehár, and kicked off a revival of Viennese operetta. 

There is, however, an unavoidably shady side to Lehár’s biography — his links to Germany’s Third Reich in general and Adolf Hitler in particular. Lehár could have gone into exile but chose to remain for most of World War II in Axis-contolled Vienna, where his wealth continued to build and where he lived in style in an impressive house once owned by theater impresario Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist for Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

Lehár wasn’t a Nazi but he knew how to survive under Austria’s Nazi-controlled regime. Many of his musical colleagues were Jews. His wife, Sophie, was Jewish but converted to her husband’s Roman Catholicism, when they married. Aware of the Nazi’s anti-Semitic obsession, Lehár used his connections to protect Sophie by having her officially declared an “Aryan of honor through marriage” (Ehrenarierin). He tried to prevent the arrest of Louis Treymann, the first Danilo in The Merry Widow, but the 70-year old Treumann and his wife were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp where they died. One of Lehár’s librettists, Fritz Löhner-Beda, was murdered in Auschwitz, despite the composer’s plea to Hitler himself.

Hitler, in fact, loved Lehár’s music. He referred to The Merry Widow as “the equal of the finest opera,” an endorsement that only added to Lehár’s wealth. In the final years of the war, Hitler reportedly played a recording of The Merry Widow over and over at his Wolf’s Lair hideaway in the Polish woods. The Fürher personally awarded Lehár Germany’s Goethe Medal. The composer reciprocated, dedicating music to Hitler and giving him a signed copy of the debut Merry Widow performance program as a birthday present.

Lehár was defensive in later years about his wartime behavior, arguing that he hadn’t been compromised by Nazi connections. “My conscience is clear,” he said at one point. “My Merry Widow was Hitler’s favorite operetta. That’s not my fault, right?”

Lehár died in 1948, age 78, in Bad Ischl, an Austrian spa town near Salzburg, where he owned an impressive villa. His much younger wife died the previous year.

- Performance notes by Eugene Carlson

Audiences reluctant to tackle weighty operas or baffled by modern atonal scores smile and swoon over the instantly hummable melodies of this bubbly operetta. The wealthy decadence of Hapsburg Vienna transported to anything-goes Parisian cafe society where everyone smiles, drinks and dances the night away.

The Merry Widow magic — sublime music, rhythmic waltzes, extravagant costumes, and comic confusion — has continued to beguile modern audiences. It is, after all, a rom com at heart with a fiery, self-assured young woman at the center of the show. Contemporary sopranos who have sung the role of Hanna Glawari include Joan Sutherland, Kiri Te Kanawa, Beverly Sills, Renée Fleming and Susan Graham. 

It’s difficult to appreciate the impact of this blockbuster show, not just in the music world but on popular culture. In the years after its opening, it spawned its own merchandise. There were songbooks and a hugely popular fashion item, the wide-brimmed Merry Widow hat, adorned with feathers and chiffon. Americans drank a Merry Widow cocktail — gin and sweet vermouth with a dash of Pernod and bitters strained over ice with a lemon twist.

There were a series of Merry Widow movies, beginning with a silent film starring Mae Murray and John Gilbert and directed by Erich von Stroheim. A black-and white movie followed, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier, and in the 1950s, a Technicolor release with Fernando Lamas and Lana Turner, with Ms. Turner’s singing voice blessedly dubbed. The movie versions took huge liberties with the operetta, in story and music, but the source was clear.

Margot Fonteyn, Patricia McBride and Peter Martins danced in some of the several versions of Merry Widow ballets. The operetta has been adapted for TV in numerous productions in the United States on public television, and in Europe.

Not least, Franz Lehár’s musical hit kept operetta alive well into the 20th century under composers Victor Herbert, Sigmund Romberg and stars like tenor Mario Lanza.  

With The Merry Widow’s monumental and lasting cultural impact, it’s startling to realize that its birth was a near thing. Librettists Viktor Léon and Leo Stein seeking a composer for their adapted story, first approached Richard Heuberger, a prolific Austrian composer, now largely forgotten. His draft score bombed. The secretary of Vienna’s prestigious Theater an der Wien then suggested a young composer and former army bandmaster, Franz Lehár, who famously won the job with an audition over the telephone!

Despite a first-rate cast, the show’s producers grew increasingly nervous during rehearsals. Sensing failure, they offered five thousand crowns to shut down the production. A misjudgment for the ages! Vienna had been saturated a century earlier by the music of “The Waltz King,” Johann Strauss II, who brought waltzes to the public. The city was primed for a revival. The Merry Widow opened at Theater an den Wien on Dec. 30, 1905, and ran for 483 performances in its opening run. It’s estimated The Merry Widow was performed a half-million times throughout the world in its first 60 years.

- Performance notes by Eugene Carlson