The performance, on November 27, 1906, was met with great acclaim, as it was at its premiere in Vienna one year earlier.
With his music, Lehár managed to reach both the big-city upper class as well as the urban lower classes. The libretto too signaled a break with the ordinary. It replaced unsophisticated sentimentalism with frivolity and humour, complete with criticisms of capitalism, marriage, and politics, a writer for a local Budapest newspaper wrote a the time.
At the Hungarian premiere, soprano Ilonka Szoyer sang the lead opposite Ákos Ráthonyi.
Born in 1870, Lehár studied at the Prague Conservatory, beginning his music career as a theatre violinist. Later Lehár moved to Vienna to become a military bandmaster. He made his debut as a composer with ?Kukuschka? in Leipzig in 1896. Although Lehár is best known for his operettas, of which the most famous is ?The Merry Widow?, he also composed sonatas, symphonic poems and marches.
Source: www.mult-kor.hu
