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• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

‘The Merry Widow’ Composed: 1905 Premiered: 1905, Vienna Libretto by Victor Léon and Leo Stein, after Henri Meilhac’s L’attaché d’ambassade Act I Baron Zeta, the Pontevedrin ambassador in Paris, must ensure that only a Pontevedrin marries Hanna Glawari, a rich, glamorous widow. All the French guests swoon over her at an embassy reception. Zeta thinks ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

(Frantz La’-här) 1870–1948 Austrian composer Of Hungarian ancestry and Czech training (his contemporary Dvořák helped him as a young man), Lehár began his career as an army bandmaster, while also writing waltzes in his spare time. These were so successful that he was able to leave the army in his early thirties to begin a long career composing operettas. Welcomed ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1870–1948, Austro–Hungarian Lehár’s father worked as a bandmaster as well as composing dances and marches. Lehár himself played in the theatre orchestra at Barmen-Elberfeld before playing in a band for his military service. He left the military having arrived in Vienna, where he took up a position as conductor at the Theater an der Wien. Lehár’s youth and early ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Modern Era
• Singer

1891–1948 Austrian tenor After his debut in Chemnitz in 1913, Tauber was engaged by the Dresden Opera as a lyric tenor. He achieved his greatest fame in operettas, especially those by Lehár; London heard him in Das Land des Lächelns (‘The Land of Smiles’) in 1931. He sang Don Ottavio (Mozart’s Don Giovanni) at Covent Garden shortly before his ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

Austrian family of composers The four most prominent members of Austria’s leading musical family were Johann Strauss the Elder (1804–49) and his three sons, Johann Strauss the Younger (1825–99), Josef Strauss (1827–70) and Eduard Strauss (1835–1916). This prolific and gifted family came from humble origins in the time of Johann the Elder. By the time he was in his twenties ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1857–1919, Italian At the beginning of the 1890s, librettist Illica began an association with the Ricordi publishing house that resulted in collaborations with the most prominent Italian opera composers over the next 20 years. Most significant was his work with Puccini. Although they had a tempestuous relationship, it resulted in Manon Lescaut and, in collaboration with Giuseppe ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

(Zol’-tan Ko-da’-e) 1882–1967 Hungarian composer Kodály was closely associated with Bartók in folksong collecting and research, but his own music takes less radical paths. Apart from his compositions – notably the colourful Peacock Variations (1939) on a Hungarian folk tune, the Dances of Marosszék (1930) and Dances of Galánta (1933), the impressive choral Psalmus Hungaricus (1923), a fine sonata ...