The Count of Luxembourg

Franz Lehár’s The Count of Luxembourg (Der Graf von Luxemburg), an operetta in two acts. Libretto by Alfred Maria Willner and Robert Bodanzki. Translation by Ramutė Skučaitė. Premiere: 1 March 2024.

What is this operetta about? About how a well-chosen marriage can make you a noble. How the same marriage can help an aristocratic spendthrift amass a pile of money. And how Love brings a cleverly devised marriage scheme crashing down. All of this takes place in Paris, more than a hundred years ago!

The operetta The Count of Luxembourg has remained popular more than 110 years after its first production, and each new interpretation delights new generations of audiences. Its world premiere took place on 12 November 1909 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. The libretto reflects the atmosphere of Paris in the first decade of the 20th century, along with the music characteristic of that period. The production was a remarkable success: audiences asked for every musical number to be repeated. The original production was performed 300 times. The operetta soon crossed Austria’s borders, attracting great interest on European stages and later around the world.

F. Lehár developed the operetta genre, which had grown popular in the late 19th century, with new rhythms, melodic style and approaches to characterisation, shaping a somewhat different type: the “new Viennese” operetta. The genre reform he began was continued by Imre Kálmán.

The Count of Luxembourg was first staged in Lithuania in 1942 at the State Theatre. It later received four more interpretations on the Kaunas stage, in 1944, 1963, 1985 and 2002.