Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe -
Theatrical Fantasy or Political Reality?
A popular illustration for articles on Viennese operetta is a cartoon published in the Viennese satirical
magazine Der Floh in October 1883 (see right). Captioned 'The librettists Zell and Genée at work', it portrays the leading team of nineteenth-century Viennese librettists sneaking out of a French theatrical library by night with the French opera libretto that was the source for Johann Strauss's operetta Eine Nacht in Venedig ('A Night in Venice').The particular point of the cartoon may have been that the specific French source was on that occasion unacknowledged; but it also neatly illustrates the dependence on French sources that was commonplace in Viennese operetta. Strauss's Die Fledermaus (1874, after a comedy by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy) is the most famous instance, while Suppè's Fatinitza (1877) and Boccaccio (1879), Strauss's Der lustige Krieg (1881) and Millöcker's Der Bettelstudent (1882) are just some of the other Zell and Genée collaborations indebted to French sources.
The tradition was continued by the next generation of Viennese librettists, including the pair who were to provide the libretto of Lehár's Die lustige Witwe ('The Merry Widow') - Viennese-born journalist Victor Léon (1858-1940) and railway-official-turned-playwright Leo Stein (1861-1921).
Die lustige Witwe was based on an early Henri Meilhac (pictured, left) comedy,
L'Attaché d'Ambassade, which was produced at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris on 12
October 1861 before Meilhac began his prolific partnership with Ludovic Halévy. It was
produced in German translation in Vienna in 1862 as Der Gesandschafts-Attaché and proved a significant success. Set in the 1860s, the play opens at a soirée at the Paris embassy of the German electorate of Birkenfeld. The guests are discussing a young widow, Madeleine Palmer, an attractive Frenchwoman whose late husband had been the richest banker in Birkenfeld. The ambassador is preoccupied with the news that Madame Palmer has declared her intention of marrying a Frenchman. He declares that, as 'Madame Palmer's enormous fortune represents a notable part of the finances of the electorate of Birkenfeld, it is therefore necessary that this fortune does not leave our country'. He assigns the job of warding off French suitors to Count Prax, an attaché at the embassy, and Prax is duly tracked down, surrounded by young ladies at the Frères Provençaux, a celebrated Parisian restaurant of the time.
In turning L'Attaché d'Ambassade into Die lustige Witwe, Léon and Stein followed the basic plot closely but made significant changes to detail. In effect Meilhac's first two acts were compressed into one, and his final act spread out into two. The Frères Provençaux reference was, of course, updated to refer to Maxim's. The most significant updating was to the German electorate of Birkenfeld, which the unification of Germany in 1871 had made long-outdated. It became the Balkan principality of Pontevedro.
'Pontevedro' was an invented name, but there were no prizes for equating it with Montenegro.
Indeed the printed German libretto openly stated that 'Pontevedro' meant Montenegro and that
Montenegrin national costume was required. Even without such help, the Viennese public would
have had no difficulty recognising the fact. When, at the start of Act 2, Hanna Glawari
welcomed her guests to a party reminiscent of festivities 'back home in Letinje', she was
obviously referring to the capital of Montenegro - Cetinje. More particularly, the name
'Danilo' chosen for the attaché was that of former hereditary Bishop-Prince rulers of
Montenegro and of the current Prince of Montenegro's eldest son and heir (pictured, right).
Likewise the
Pontevedrin ambassador Mirko Zeta took his name from the ruling Prince's second son, Prince
Mirko of Grahovo and Zetà, with Zetà being the main river and plain of Montenegro and the
mediaeval name of Montenegro itself. As if that were not enough, the comic figure of the
embassy messenger took his name from Njegoš, the most revered Montenegrin Bishop-Prince,
founder of the Montenegrin state, and acclaimed poet. Today njegos.org is the name of the
Montenegro website! 
Montenegro was ideal for the principality depicted in Die lustige Witwe. In the first place
it was certainly small. Despite doubling in size as a result of the Congress of Berlin in
1878, it was a mere pin-prick on the map of Europe (see map, left, dating from around 1900) compared with the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire
immediately to the north, the Turkish Ottoman Empire to the south and east, and the Russian
Empire to the north-east. With Turkey then embracing Albania, and Austro-Hungary administering
Bosnia, it was not so much a case of Montenegro being on Austro-Hungary's doorstep as of
Montenegro being Austro-Hungary's doorstep - a mere stepping-stone between the Habsburg
empire to the north and Turkey to the south. Its entire population of under 300,000 was
less than that of many a city of Austro-Hungary, and it was tiny even by comparison with
neighbouring Balkan states. At a time of disturbances in the Balkans in 1903, it was
reported to have a field force of a mere 43,500 men compared with three or four times
that number in each of Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia. Besides being small, Montenegro was also undeniably poor. It was a victim of the wild, mountainous territory that gave the country its natural protection against attack as well as a name that means 'Black Mountain'. During the first few years of the twentieth century Prince Nicholas of Montenegro was making high-profile efforts to overcome that poverty by modernising and developing the country. Roads were being built, and the country's finances were strengthened by the sale of concessions for the operation of railways and a steamboat service on Lake Scutari, as well as by the considerable amounts of money sent home by Montenegrins emigrating in substantial numbers to the United States.
All the Balkan countries had long been political shuttlecocks between Habsburg Austro-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey. Montenegro's rivalry with Austro-Hungary especially went back a long way and on the most personal level. After the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, the the longest-serving sovereign in Europe was the Habsburg Emperor Franz-Joseph, who had ruled since 1848. The second-longest-serving was none other than Nicholas, ruling Prince of Montenegro since 1861.
That the efforts to modernise led Montenegro to play Austria-Hungary off against Russia is abundantly clear from one incident that shows that operetta plots had little on real life. During December 1901 rumours emerged from St Petersburg that Austro-Hungary was preparing for an invasion of a tongue of Turkish territory (around the town of Novi Bazar) that separated Montenegro from Serbia. On 26 February 1902, The Times [of London] carried a report from Vienna that provided an explanation:-
"Three months ago a rumour got abroad that Austria-Hungary intended to advance troops beyond Novi Bazar. It is hardly necessary to say that there was never the slightest foundation for such a report, but although it assumed great persistence few people knew at the time what was its origin. Today's Information gives some curious particulars on the subject which have a fair appearance of truth. It states that the object of the journey of Prince Nicholas of Montenegro to St. Petersburg was chiefly to obtain a loan of 10,000,000f., which he had been unable to raise either in Rome or Paris. He sought to prove that he was in possession of unquestionable evidence that Austria-Hungary intended in the course of this year to send an army beyond Novi Bazar, and Montenegro wanted money for armaments. According to the Information, the story was disbelieved in St. Petersburg, where intelligence of that kind, had it been true, would naturally have been received before it came to the ears of Prince Nicholas.
Other news reports on Montenegro could have applied equally well to the Pontevedro of Lehár's operetta. Most immediately, the intention to set up foreign legations gained coverage in another report from Vienna, published in The Times on 5 November 1902:-
"The Prince has announced his intention to create a diplomatic service by founding Legations in Rome and other cities. This is an old plan, which he has hitherto been prevented from carrying out through want of funds. Now, however, it appears to be supported by Russia and Italy. King Victor Emmanuel has repeatedly expressed a wish to see Montenegro represented in Rome by a Minister Plenipotentiary, and not merely by a Consul-General."
A mere eleven days before the première of Die lustige Witwe, Montenegro attracted attention yet again when, as another part of the Prince of Montenegro's attempt to modernise the country, he opened the new National Representative Assembly. He proclaimed a liberal Constitution and declared Montenegro to be a constitutional Monarchy. Against such a political background, it is hardly surprising that use of the country in a satirical operetta did not go down well with some Montenegrins. After the Viennese première on 30 December 1905, Montenegrin students in Vienna demonstrated in front of the Parliament. There were particular problems when the work reached Italy, since King Victor Emmanuel III was married to Montenegrin Princess Jelena, sister of Princes Danilo and Mirko. When Lehár conducted the first performance in Trieste on 27 February 1907, the Neues Wiener Journal reported that the performance was interrupted by a commotion in the auditorium that lasted almost a quarter of an hour:-
"Part of the audience whistled and shouted at the tops of their voices, and at the same time red slips of paper fluttered from the gallery on which could be read in tortured Italian that the Italians should not offend the Montenegrins. The Police detained around fifty demonstrators and ejected them from the theatre. Then the performance resumed to great applause." Four months later still, at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence in June 1907, protests caused the performance to be abandoned and an Italian operetta substituted. There were rowdy demonstrations, too, when the operetta was first produced in Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman empire. For the London production, also in June 1907, diplomatic problems were avoided by renaming Pontevedro as the unidentifiable Marsovia. The same change was made for the 1909 French première, which had been delayed by copyright problems over Meilhac's rights.
In November 1908, the Theater an der Wien used the Balkans as a setting once more, when it produced Oscar Straus's Der tapfere Soldat ('The Chocolate Soldier'), based on Georghe Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man. By then, Austria-Hungary's relationship with the Balkan states had deteriorated to the extent that it was making headlines around the world. The Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina in October 1908 was the prelude to a rapid escalation of hostilities that led to war in the Balkans in 1913, the assassination of the Habsburg heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in June 1914, and finally the outbreak of the First World War.
The more one delves into the history of the time, the more abundantly clear it becomes that there was far more to the choice of Montenegro as the impoverished principality satirised in Die lustige Witwe than the opportunity for colourful national costumes and for Lehár to demonstrate his genius for portraying national colour. The clearer it becomes that it was not just a case of finding a modern equivalent of Birkenfeld, but that Meilhac's play was dusted off specifically to have a dig at Montenegro. It would, of course, be absurd to suggest that Lehár's Die lustige Witwe was a cause of World War I; but it seems clear that it was very much a symbol of the attitudes that led to it.
© Andrew Lamb, 2004
revised from article in programme of The Merry Widow, Royal Opera, London, 1997