The Merry Widow

Show Description:

What more need be said?—it is the most popular, most recorded, and most performed operetta of all time. The Merry Widow brought sensuality to operetta and broke new ground in probing the psychological motivations of its characters. The story, set in Paris at the turn of the previous century, centers on desperate efforts by Baron Zeta of Pontevedro to find a Pontevedrian husband for the recently widowed, but now fabulously wealthy, Hanna Glawari, who is being chased by throngs of admiring and avaricious males. He engages fellow countryman and womanizer Count Danilo, who once loved Hanna, but whose family forbade his marriage to a commoner. Their passions rekindle, but Danilo’s hopes are seemingly shattered when he catches her in a pavilion rendezvous with the dashing Camille, who has been courting Zeta’s wife Valencienne. From Hanna’s tale of “Vilja” to Danilo’s tribute to Maxim’s to the swinging septet “Girls, Girls, Girls” to the sensuous “Merry Widow Waltz,” Lehár’s score is a revelation that effectively jump-started the Silver Age of Operetta in Vienna and led to the future show gems of Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, and Leo Fall, to say nothing of his own future hits.