WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln - Lehár: Wiener Frauen (2000)

»It is a pleasure to listen to the orchestra: after a long pause, again a musician who knows how to write operettas.« This statement appeared in the strict Neue Freie Presse of Vienna following the premiere of Franz Lehár's first operetta, Wiener Frauen, at the Theater an der Wien in November 1902. After Johann Strauß and Carl Millöcker, the giants of the Golden Age of the operetta, had died in 1899, a noticeable vacuum was created, with attempts being made to fill it already in the last decade of the nineteenth century – but to no avail. It was then that the young military bandmaster Franz Lehár came along at just the right moment – after having doffed his uniform for good in 1902. He was a composer in his orientation phase, and it was not at all clear where his musical path would take him; but he felt that the opera was his calling. Fate and fortune, however, pointed him in a slightly different direction: he suddenly found himself with two operetta libretti to set. One was Der Rastelbinder, and the other was Wiener Frauen. Both celebrated sensational successes, and overnight Lehár was the new operetta king. Now here was a fellow who could write memorable melodies, and soon everybody everywhere – not only in Vienna – was whistling the »Nechledil March.« Our freshly produced cross section vindicates the honor of Lehár's inaugural work.