The Count of Luxembourg

1909

Music by Franz Lehár
Original German Libretto by Alfred Willner and Robert Bodanzky
English Translation by Steven A. Daigle

Barely had the world recovered from the sensation created by The Merry Widow than its composer Franz Lehár did it again with his 1909 operetta The Count of Luxembourg, which remains to this day one of the supreme gems from the Silver Age of Viennese operetta. The story, originally written for a Johann Strauss operetta more than a decade earlier, centers on a plot hatched by Prince Basil to secure an aristocratic title for the opera singer Angèle, whom he wishes to wed. He arranges that she first marry—and soon thereafter divorce—the penniless, and thus easily bought, Count René. The concocted wedding takes place with René and Angèle on opposite sides of a screen, never within view of each other. Lehár’s music is replete with toe-tapping marches, jaunty polkas, and sensuous waltzes.