Quinte Arts Council and Jeunesses Musicales of Canada present

The MERRY WIDOW

BY FRANZ LEHAR

The world's most popular operetta

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. (Reception 6:30 p.m.)
Empire Theatre, 321 Front St., Belleville, ON

Tickets   |   Information
 

When Franz Lehár conducted the first performance of The Merry Widow at Vienna's Theater-an-der-Wien on December 30, 1905, few spectators could have known that this would become the world's most popular operetta, with only Johann Strauss’s  Die Fledermaus a possible contender for the title. It was provided with inappropriate and worn out costumes, given the cheapest possible production, allowed insufficient rehearsal time, and scheduled for the single least popular night for theater of the entire year. But The Merry Widow burst on the world like a musical bombshell. The show ran through the end of the winter season at the theater, then transferred to other theaters for the summer (normally it would simply have stopped), and resumed at the original theater in the fall. When the Widow arrived in America one writer reported that "it invaded every nook and cranny of daily living. Women's clothes were patterned after the styles set by The Merry Widow. The music was heard in every café, in every restaurant; the famous waltz even succeeded in sweeping native dances from the floor."  There were Merry Widow cigars, Merry Widow chocolates, perfumes, liquors, train rides, tea rooms and more. 

Lehár's road to stardom was not an easy one. He was born in the Hungarian town of Komárom (northwest of Budapest near the border of today's Slovak Republic). At the Prague Conservatory he studied violin and theory, and received advice from Dvořák about composition. At first he worked as a violinist, arranger, composer of concert music and bandmaster for several regiments, one of which brought him to Vienna in 1899. Here, in 1902, he also became conductor at the Theater-an-der-Wien, the hall that figured prominently in the lives of so many great composers, including Mozart, Beethoven and Johann Strauss II.

One could simply claim that The Merry Widow has been performed "countless" times and leave it at that. But we have statistics, some of them quite astounding, to back up this claim. Lehár's biographer Bernard Grun has calculated that there have been well over half a million performances to date. Among other things, Grun discovered that on one Saturday in 1907 in Buenos Aires, the potential operetta-goer could choose from a total of ten performances in five languages in as many theaters. Performances have since been given in over two dozen languages, all over the world.

ABOUT JEUNESSES MUSICALES OF CANADA

Since 1949, Jeunesses Musicales of Canada has had a dual mission: to bring fine music to audiences of all ages, especially 3 to 12-year-olds, and to foster the careers of outstanding young professional instrumentalists, singers and composers in Canada and abroad. Thanks to the support of its partners and the work of hundreds of volunteers, Jeunesses Musicales of Canada has become Canada’s largest classical music performance network and produces some 650 concerts a year. In 2000, the organization opened a new building in Montreal that includes a 100-seat chamber music hall.

JMC is affiliated with Jeunesses Musicales International (JMI), founded in 1945 in Belgium and considered today by UNESCO as the world’s leading cultural organization dedicated to youth and music. Each year, Jeunesses Musicales International’s 41 national chapters organize more than 30,000 musical events, reaching an audience of some six million people.

This tour is made possible thanks to the financial support of the Mouvement des caisses Desjardins, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, The Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and The Toronto Arts Council.