Die Lustige Witwe

At the Pontevedrian delegation's grand ball in Paris, everyone's anticipation is for wealthy Hanna Glawari, recently widowed. Marriage to a compatriot would be salvation for the small bankrupt state of Pontevedro. A secret game of fidelity and infidelity begins. While hostess Valencienne wants to play Cupid between her beau Camille and the wealthy widow, Baron Zeta, her husband, sets his sights on the bon vivant Danilo Danilowitsch. But when Danilo recognizes in the wily Hanna the woman he loved before she married (but whom he could not marry for reasons of rank), he backs out. At the end of the evening there are financial winnersə and emotional losersə, and an unconventional couple that crosses boundaries. The debut of “The Merry Widow,” which took place in 1905, is considered the birth of modern danced operetta and established Franz Lehár's worldwide fame. His brilliant musical interludes, such as “Da geh' ich zu Maxim,” “Lippen schweigen” or the Vilja-Lied, are famous. On the diplomatic parquet, erotic and political interests are contested to the rhythm of waltzes, polkas and mazurkas, as well as cancan and cakewalk. Lehár lays bare a bourgeois society that provokes with secret desires and hides the depths behind the facade with great humor. This operetta, in which a confident woman holds all the reins, is first staged for the Vereinigte Bühnen Bozen by Austrian director Susanne Lietzow. Greek conductor Elisa Gogou will musically follow this joke with fire.