Schön ist die Welt opera review – romance is in the air

Franz Lehár was clearly not a pessimist. Any composer with the frothy Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), Das Lande des Lächelns (The Land of Smiles) and Schön ist die Welt (How Fair the World) in his repertoire is bound to be suspected of having downed too many happy pills.

Caveat. His 1908 Der Mann mit den drei Frauen (The Man with Three Women) was problematic; some deemed it bliss, others deemed it hell. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Bayerische Staatsoper has decided to cheer us all up, bang on cue for Valentine’s Day, by releasing a filmed, sparkling, cabaret-style, minimally staged version of Schön ist die Welt. It is an opera – NOT operetta (in Lehár’s view) – with a boy meets girl, gets girl popsicle of a plot. In lesser hands, the piece would be pointlessly trivial.

The Munich based company with a reputation for cutting edge, avant-garde productions has polished a worthy, but frankly rather run of the mill, Lehár product into a shining ninety-minute gem. Problem is, Lehár always spoils listeners with beautiful flowing musical lines. They become too easily anticipated. Melodies sparkle here like Alpine streams.

The broadcast is cheaper than Valentine flowers, less sickly than those chocolate-dipped cherry liqueurs that my wife adores, and much less risky than wrong sized lingerie. A word to the wise, if you are in doubt about Valentine lingerie sizes, err on the small side. The bruising from last year is fading nicely. Good of you to ask.

The work is a hybrid, lying somewhere between the domains of operetta and opera. Lehár’s considerable fortune and present-day dismissal as something of a lightweight rest on the huge success of The Merry Widow, a shameless operetta. His early works in the 1890’s, Der Kurasier, Rodrigo and Kukuška had been unsuccessful operas. Lehár literally built his opulent villa on the foundations of the thirty or so operettas and Singspiels written between 1900 and the late 1920s.

Then, in 1930, came something of a turning point. His compositional style in Schön deepened, taking on tones of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler in the orchestral passages. The overture is a homage to Strauss’ Alpine Symphony of 1915. The light-hearted plot of operettas past persisted, but the rendering is suddenly approaching serieux. In the scheme of things, does that really matter? I think it adds a dimension to Franz Lehár I had negligently overlooked until I encountered Schön.

Staatsoper cheekily overeggs the pudding, describing Lehár in the programme notes as the Wagner of operetta and Crown Prince Georg; the hero of Schön, as an Alpine Tristan. Why do I feel the point of a tongue poking into a distended cheek?

What should never be underestimated is Lehár’s seriousness as a musical craftsman. He was much admired by Mahler and highly respected by contemporaries on the demanding Viennese musical circuit. Frankly, they envied his box office success. His long-term collaboration with Austrian tenor, Richard Tauber was founded on mutual artistic respect.

Driven by a strong work ethic, he grafted late into the night in the idyllic Lehár Villa in Bad Ischll, on the banks of the River Traun in Upper Austria. Melodies like the famous Velia aria from the Merry Widow, never tripped easily off the pen.

So, what is Schön all about? Think an uber aristocratic The Sound of Music without the annoying children. The lack of cackling, indomitably cheerful nuns is also welcome. How do you solve a problem like Duchess Maria? There is Edelweiss.

Crown Prince Georg arrives at an Alpine resort to meet his unknown fiancee, Princess Elizabeth. However, on the way he had stops to help a girl, whose name he did not discover, to mend a puncture and falls madly in love with her.

He announces to his father, the king of an unidentified land, that he will not marry Princess Elizabeth because now he loves another. Matters are complicated by the fact that the king’s mistress, Duchess Maria Brackenhorst, is also staying at the hotel. She is the mother of Princess Elizabeth.

Georg and the unknown puncture victim fancy each other something rotten and decide to go on an alpine hike. We are now in deeply suggestive euphemism territory. After a dramatic night spent by our unwitting hero and heroine on a mountain because of an avalanche, everything turns out right when Georg discovers that his heart’s desire is, in fact, Princess Elizabeth. Today, a simple Facetime exchange would have destroyed the plot.

The narrative risks descending to kitschy drivel, but producer, Tobias Robitzki, credited on Operabase with thirteen productions in the last three years, delivers a masterstroke. He combines the roles of the pompous hotel director/narrator with the king in the suave personage of Max Hopp, a German bass who has developed his stagecraft working with Komische Oper Berlin, under the anarchic tutelage of Barrie Kosky, the Australian opera director. He, who made Hans Werner Henze’s The Bassarids a bearable spectacle.

The action takes place with minimal props in front of the orchestra. A bistro table and chairs, champagne goblets and descending chandeliers are all it takes to set the atmosphere. Herr Hopp, dressed in minimalist black and hefty Buddy Holly frame specs engages the audience as confidant, explaining the action.

Hopp wrote the “moderation text” that supplements the sung libretto. There are engaging, amusing asides, dropped in as ad libs – “Why are we on stage with the orchestra? Because during Covid that’s all the Staatsoper can afford.”

His means of transforming from sycophant hotel manager to king is simple, ditching the Buddy Hollys and replacing them with monocle and a petulant grimace. It’s amazing what the addition of a monocle can achieve.

In the interests of full disclosure Reaction readers should (confidentially of course) be told that one revered Reaction fellow contributor is also an aficionado of this monocle trick – on the very Scottish grounds that with only one dodgy eye, why waste cash on a redundant lens? The routine provokes mayhem in restaurants. Post lockdown I hope he and Herr Hopp may meet, to discuss common monocular experiences.

In the meantime, in the Alps, the pace is compelling, but never frantic. There is a sniff of Kurt Weil cabaret in the air. Covid necessity has been the mother of operatic invention – and nowhere more so than in this production.

I was unfamiliar with all the cast, except Herr Hopp. New Zealand soprano, Eliza Boom sings the Duchess; tenor, Sebastian Kolhepp, Crown Prince George; soprano Julia Kleiter, Elizabeth Princess von und zu Lichtenberg. Mercedes del Rossa, sung by soprano Juliana Zara is a young opera singer lusted after for an irresponsible moment by the king, but eventually surrendered to his ADC, Count Sascha Karlowitsch, German tenor Manuel Günther. All perform with musical skill and theatrical gusto.

The orchestra is under the more than capable baton of musical director, Friedrich Heider, and, in shot for much of the action, clearly relishes the luscious Lehár score.

Franz Lehár died in 1948, Richard Strauss in 1949, both under the shadow of a questionable relationship with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. Strauss’s composition and conducting of the 1936 Munich Olympic hymn is a well-documented episode. Lehár’s involvement is less so.

In 1945, at the age of 75 he was interviewed by Viennese journalist, Elsa Herz, over the course of a full day at his town house in Vienna. She had lost family in the concentration camps during the war. In spite of Lehár’s protestations, the questioning veered onto the uncomfortable ground of atrocities and why he had not departed Austria for America.

The encounter caused Lehár such pain that when Elsa Herz returned the following day his door remained firmly closed. A recent and excellent documentary of the encounter from arte.tv is available until 3 March. It’s free!

Was Lehár complicit? Unlike Strauss he shunned official appointments. He, too, worked behind the scenes to shield Jewish friends and colleagues from the Gestapo. With good reason. His wife, Sophie, although formally a Roman Catholic, had been born Jewish. Lehár went through the distasteful process of having her categorised as an “honorary Aryan”.

Even so, the Gestapo came knocking and Lehár had to call in favours from high placed friends to stop his wife being transported to the concentration camps. From his letters it is clear that Lehár agonised over his decision to see the regime out in Vienna. “I can hardly be blamed if Adolf Hitler happens to like my tunes.” If he had been abroad when the Gestapo came calling, he would never have seen his wife again.

Perhaps his move in later years to the more operatic idiom of Schön ist die Welt reflects the sombre fact that when he composed it in 1930, Franz Lehár was aware that, even then, his cherished “Land of Smiles” was on the point of vanishing for ever.