Program Six: Operetta’s America

4:30 pm Preconcert Talk: Micaela Baranello
5:00 pm Performance: Rebecca Ringle Kamarei, mezzo-soprano; So Young Park, soprano; Frederick Ballantine, tenor; Will Ferguson, tenor; Tyler Duncan, baritone; Erika Switzer, piano; Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director; The Orchestra Now, conducted by Zachary Schwartzman

Selections from:
Leo Fall (1873–1925/Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957), Rosen aus Florida (1929)
Leo Fall/Jerome Kern (1885–1945), The Dollar Princess (1909)
Oscar Straus (1870–1954), Hochzeit in Hollywood (1929)
Emmerich Kálmán (1882–1953), Die Herzogin von Chicago (1928)
Paul Abraham (1892–1960), Die Blume von Hawaii (1931)
Bruno Granichstaedten (1874–1944), Reklame! (1930)

Korngold enjoyed a second, more lucrative career as an expert adapter and expander of classic Viennese operetta, and it was he who spearheaded the Johann Strauss II revival of the 1920s. Working with famed director and producer Max Reinhardt, he achieved his greatest success with Rosalinda, a restructured version of Die Fledermaus that – with choreography by George Balanchine and initially with Korngold himself conducting from the piano – ran for more than 600 performances on Broadway. As the works excerpted in Program Six reveal, the New World provided both new audiences and new inspiration for operetta. These include such rarities as Leo Fall’s Rosen aus Florida, which Korngold recreated from incomplete sketches provided by the composer’s widow; The Dollar Princess, also by Fall, and adapted by musical theater legend Jerome Kern; Emmerich Kálmán’s Die Herzogin von Chicago, which mingles Viennese waltz with jazz; and Oscar Straus’s Hochzeit in Hollywood, the basis for a subsequent musical film.