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[0:04] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, I'm Robert W. Schneider, and welcome to Fifty Key Stage Musicals, the podcast, a companion piece to the Routledge Press publication, Fifty Key Stage Musicals, which is available for purchase by going to Routledge.com or clicking the link below in today's show description.

[0:21] Robert W. Schneider: Today's episode focuses on chapter three, the 1905 production of The Merry WIDOW.

[0:28] Robert W. Schneider: And with us today is the author of that chapter, Andrew Child.

[0:38] Robert W. Schneider: Has been seen on stages and screens all over Boston, Argentina, and Italy. He has also worked as an arts writer with a focus on Boston's complete arts ecosystem and as a guest artist for institutions such as MIT, Emerson College, New England Conservatory, Clark University, and NYU. Andrew, I'm so happy that you're with us today.

[0:59] Andrew Child: Yeah, I'm really excited to be here, Rob. Thank you.

[1:02] Robert W. Schneider: Thank you. Now, Andrew, uh, what makes The Merry WIDOW a key musical?

[1:08] Andrew Child: Hmm. The MERRY Widow. And I was so excited to be able to write about it for this book in this context. I think The Merry WIDOW is one of those shows where we can actually quantify its direct influence on American musical theater. We're talking about a show that was this huge international sensation. Um, that it's actually hard to quantify the impact that it had on culture, on society. In its premiere in Austria, it takes Europe by storm. It comes to the United States, and there's an absolute mania about it. It's this predecessor in so many ways to the mega musical and the national tour in a franchised way that we're not really gonna see again to this extent until the 1980s, until we're talking Cats and Phantom and Les Miz and Miss Saigon.

That we have this franchise that has souvenirs, that has the sheet music being sold, that has dance arrangements being sent out to different social clubs, that has a brand of cigars, that has cocktails themed around it, that has sandwiches themed around it. Um particularly it becomes this societal icon in the mainstream. And we've got uh London production being designed by Lucille Duff Gordon as the costume designer, and this is the woman who eventually is going to invent the fashion show. She is the designer who's going to uh create the flapper look, you know. And of course, we talk about the flapper being this subversive counterculture in the 20s, but it still has to come from somewhere. It has to come, someone has to design that, someone has to give this group of empowered women their look.

And Lucille Duff Gordon sort of precedes her own work, creating that look with this idea of this leading female character. She's older and she's merry and she's a widow, and she's the lead character in this show, and she has sort of a dropped waist look that sort of predates the flapper. So a little bit tangential, but I did just want to hit on like how huge this was. And the reason that this is a key musical is because we have this obsession with this show. We have everyone doing it, we have unauthorized prequels, unauthorized sequels, unauthorized uh crappy translations, all of this going on, and then this mania is at its peak, and Europe enters the Great War, and even before the United States is officially involved in the Great War, our sort of natural alliance and public sympathies obviously go to England.

Um so it becomes unpatriotic to have The Merry WIDOW be on stage, to be supporting it, to be enjoying it even because we're talking Austria-Hungary, we're talking Eastern Europe, we're talking the enemy now. And so I think this show is key not only because it was such a smash success, it was such a cultural icon, but it's also key because then it suddenly had to go away, it suddenly had to disappear, and that's where we can quantifiably say all right, we've got this popular music, we've got this unified storyline, we've got these dual romantic characters running side by side, and now when we can't do that anymore, we need to start producing homegrown American iterations of this, and that's where we can look through a biography of Rogers and Hammerstein.

We can look through Jerome Kern, and we can see that The Merry WIDOW influenced them and was. Sorry, that's me. And we can see that The Merry WIDOW influenced them and was a direct influence on their work.

[5:53] Robert W. Schneider: And what made you want to codify this musical out of all the other musicals that were out there? Why did you want to tell this story?

[6:03] Andrew Child: I have a really, I think, special relationship with The Merry WIDOW. The first time that I ever saw it was in a really great production in Boston, the Boston Lyric Opera. This Argentinian American playwright, uh, Lillian Grogue, uh reworked the libretto, and she also directed it. Um she kind of wanted to, everything I just hit upon, she wanted to bring to the forefront of her production, so she created this multilingual libretto that it's you know, it's an operetta, so it's sung and it's spoken. She had different characters, different moments in French, in Hungarian, in so many different languages, and she just made it this melting pot, and she really wanted to comment on this idea that there's this beautiful, lively, happy, madcap, merry musical taking the world by storm, and they don't even know that a couple years down the road the world is not going to look like that at all, and that we're going to launch into a decade, a century, whatever, of tumult and poverty and violence that the world has not really seen before.

But I was so taken by this production, so taken by the way that she commented on the turn of the century, uh globalizing world. And I fell in love with the music, obviously, which is so haunting, so staying, so iconic. And then a couple years after I had seen this production, something that again made The Merry WIDOW special to me was I had a professor in college, and she was complaining about The Merry WIDOW. She was a set designer for a repertory opera company in upstate New York. And another thing about The Merry WIDOW is, you know, it's still regularly performed today. It's still in so many of the world's great opera repertoires. Um, and the idea with this specific company was they were doing three shows in rep, and two of them that summer were these really avant-garde, contemporary, dark new pieces, like really strange stuff.

I remember looking at the libretto, and one of them just straight up did not understand what was happening. It was something about little birds inside boxes, and they were all racing each other. I don't know. Um, but of course, strange, and everyone was gonna be in like a black turtleneck sitting in a metal folding chair, singing, like that kind of thing. Um, if that is a kind of thing. And basically to bankroll these other two weirdo contemporary new operas, they were also mounting a surefire hit, The Merry WIDOW. And so she was miserable because she was designing the sets for all three, and these other two were so in her wheelhouse, uh, but she also had to do The Merry WIDOW. And so I think in listening to her talking about how am I gonna make a set that can be used in its base form for all three of these shows?

I really got to rediscover The Merry WIDOW, fall in love with it, and so when the opportunity came to talk about a show that I feel is key, uh that's kind of where my mind went. That's what I was thinking about with The Merry WIDOW.

[9:44] Robert W. Schneider: Can you give us a little context on uh the turn of the 20th century where uh we're looking at operetta? Where what how does The Merry WIDOW compare to other operettas that are going on at this particular time?

[9:59] Andrew Child: Yeah, so we're just coming away from Wagner's grand opera, really. So he's kind of on his last legs, uh, and he's someone when we talk about the grand opera, who revolutionized the form. He designed his own theater, he directed his own shows, and he really kind of pioneered this idea that it's like you're not at the opera to be seen, you're at the opera to shut up, sit down and watch my show. So he's using the latest in gas technology to be able to turn the lights out on the audience and put lights on the stage. He's also using the latest in steam technology to get all kinds of mystical spooky effects. And that technology has a really fascinating effect on the content of the operas being made.

And so we see contemporarily with Wagner, in addition to Wagner himself, we're seeing a lot of dark, we're seeing a lot of spooky, we're seeing a lot of in line with the romantics, a lot of ephemeral subject matter. We're talking ghosts, we're talking Nordic legends, you know, we're talking all kinds of things with smoke and steam and all that good stuff. And so we're kind of coming away from that. And but we like this idea of the audience is gonna be in darkness, we're gonna have light on the stage, and then we're talking coming away from that, uh, Die Fledermaus, which is considered a really great groundbreaking comic operetta, and I think the leg up that The Merry WIDOW has on Die Fledermaus is Die Fledermaus really is still like a musical comedy in the derogatory sense of the term.

[12:10] Andrew Child: No offense, you know, we like musical comedy, but we don't have the unified story just yet with Defletermous. Uh so we have, you know, an opening to one of the acts. We have this long-winded comedic monologue by the jailer, or we have an ode to beer at one point. We have all these songs that have no real connection to the story that are just sort of offshoots, and we just want to include them. So when we talk MERRY WIDOW, coming away from that, we're talking about Franz Lehár, the composer who has a background in military marches. That's what he was mostly composing. That's what his father wanted him doing. And he sort of takes the form. He's got this story that he's working with illegally. They did not license the play that this was based on.

And he gives us a unified narrative. It's funny, it's comical, it has dialogue interwoven, but every single song in the show has to do with the story, has to do with this emotional backbone of one of the two lovers' stories. Either the main story with Hanna Glawari, the MERRY WIDOW, or with the ingenue kind of side plot characters.

[13:38] Andrew Child: And for those of us who might be unfamiliar with the MERRY WIDOW, because if you're a fan of musical theater, this doesn't enter the repertoire too often. Right. Can you give us just a short synopsis of what is going on in the MERRY WIDOW?

[13:53] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah, basically, we have Hanna, who is a wealthy widow living in Pontevedro, and which is like sneaky, it's supposed to be like Montenegro. And she is very wealthy and was left a lot of money from her deceased husband, thus she's a widow, and there's this thought among the Pontavadrian officials and the elite that she is going to marry someone French, thus her money is going to exit their nation state with her and pretty much bankrupt Pontevedro. And so they hatch this whole scheme to have these parties and set her up with a former lover who, news flash, she actually still has feelings for, and hilarity ensues as they try and set her up with this guy, essentially to keep her money within their domain.

[14:57] Andrew Child: Got it. Um, one of the things that I find interesting when I'm teaching younger students who don't really come from the world of operetta or have no interest in it, is if I play them a song from an operetta or I show them a clip of an operetta, um, they just sort of roll their eyes and have no understanding of what's going on. And sometimes I'll be honest, I'm with them as well. Can you make a case for why operetta has sort of fallen out of fashion and should it be brought back into the repertoire?

[15:34] Robert W. Schneider: Well, I mean I think with MERRY WIDOW, we have a couple key songs that to say they've fallen out of fashion is just to sort of erase the fact that they are a template that later musical theater songs really follow. Particularly what comes to mind is "Vilia," which is sort of supposed to be this Pontavadrian folk number that Hanna sings. And it's just so lilting and haunting and beautiful. And it's still in standard opera repertoires.

[16:25] Robert W. Schneider: Which is this sort of coy lovers duet going back and forth, which I think we see repackaged in something like Oklahoma, um, all or nothing, or even what's it called in Oklahoma? Um, people will say we're in love.

[16:45] Andrew Child: I was thinking of Carousel, "If I Loved You."

[16:45] Robert W. Schneider: If I loved you, right. Which same thing. It's kind of this back and forth, this hypothetical, this teasing each other love song. So I think that when we look at these songs in context as templates for these later works that we do celebrate, that we're, you know, you're not going to go and see a student showcase that doesn't hit on one of these songs. You're gonna see them in tabaret performances. I think something that prevents these works from being included in the standard musical theater repertoire is also that they're written for opera singers. You know, again, we're dealing with a guy whose background is military marches, he's orchestrating this for an orchestra way bigger than what a college is going to spring for for their little showcase at the end of the year with a piano and maybe a drummer.

[17:52] Andrew Child: Um, I think that so Kelly O'Hara did one of the roles, Valencienne, in Susan Stroman's production for the Met recently, and in all of her interviews, she sort of talks about how, yes, she trained as an opera singer in undergrad in school. This is what she studied. Obviously, we know her for doing so many different legit soprano roles on Broadway and everywhere. She's really gotten around. But she talks about in her interviews being so intimidated by the other performers at the Metropolitan, because that is a different type of training. It's a different level of care for an instrument. They're working without microphones, they're doing all these different things that are so not standard for theater.

[18:47] Robert W. Schneider: And so I think that element does sort of prohibit these songs from standing alone within the musical theater repertoire because it has a foot in the grand opera tradition, and it also has a foot in the musical theater tradition. Because conversely to Kelly O'Hara's interviews about working at the Met when uh Renee Fleming, who was playing the widow in that production, who is, you know, a grand dame of the opera stage, has played huge roles at the Met before. All of a sudden, she's working with Susan Stroman, and she's expected to move and to dance while she's singing in a way that she has never been expected to do before. And here's, you know, Kelly O'Hara who can, you know, do the splits while belting a high C, you know, like it's just a totally different skill set.

[19:41] Andrew Child: And we've really sort of itemized these two different worlds. And I think that's where we kind of see these pieces of operetta falling in the middle. And when we've really separated these two art forms, it's hard for the MERRY WIDOW to find legs to stand on.

[20:00] Robert W. Schneider: What case would you make for, regardless of where it's being performed, even if it's being performed at the Met for the inclusion of the MERRY WIDOW in the 21st century? What is the universality of this piece that justifies it taking up a slot in the Metropolitan Opera season?

[20:17] Andrew Child: I mean, I think from a historical context, everything that we've kind of touched upon that this was huge, this mattered. I think we'll always have a place for the MERRY WIDOW. Um, ironically, you know, the same season that Oklahoma is on Broadway, George Balanchine has a production of the MERRY WIDOW opening on Broadway. I think it's an eternal piece that it's gonna be everlasting because of how significant it was. And when we listen to this music, we can, whether we're listening for it or not, we can hear the influence on its immediate followers in this art form. We can also hear its influence in the works that are still being created today.

[21:07] Andrew Child: So I think one from a historical context, we still have reason to revive this show. We still have reason to see this show. But then I also think that it's this pretty basic storyline. It is a farce, it's a silly, confusing characters knowing less than the audience knows, which we enjoy, you know. We enjoy seeing people in these kind of mad cap scenarios. So I think the libretto has had so much work done to it. Um, almost anyone who's going to attempt it is going to have a new libretto written for their production. And I think with that opportunity, you have such a great chance to showcase the performers you're working with, such a great opportunity to deliver something to your specific audience, and know that this storyline with these melodies and these gorgeous orchestrations and these recognizable tunes, that you're going to have a fun, pleasant, silly evening of early musical theater.

[22:20] Robert W. Schneider: As a director and writer yourself, how would you approach putting this story on stage?

[22:27] Andrew Child: Well, I will say that the production of this that made me fall in love with the show. Now, if I saw it again, I would have a different approach, I think. I think she went very heavy-handed with it. I think that it was like a downer. Like you took this silly, light, fun musical romp and you made it about war, and you made it about, oh haha, these people don't know what's coming. They don't know what's about to happen in the next century, and they're just here throwing confetti, drinking champagne, living their lives.

[23:06] Robert W. Schneider: Um, conversely, the Susan Stroman production at the Met does not touch upon any of that at all, does not really wink wink give a nudge to the historical implications of presenting the MERRY WIDOW, and she does what Susan Stroman does best. She gives us Can Can Girls with high kicks, and she gives us beautiful costumes by William Ivy Long and fabulous sets and bright lights and confetti and champagne, and it's fun. I would love to find something in between those two worlds.

[23:44] Andrew Child: Um, I would also love to sort of work with people who really knew how to address, like we talked about, it's hard to land something between these two worlds because it's not a grand opera, and it received a lot of criticism. It's production at the Met because there's so much speaking, there really is a book to this show, it's not sung through, so putting that on stage at the Met is hard.

[24:14] Andrew Child: You know, they ended up micking the performers for the lengthy scenes where they're talking, which an opera audience doesn't like to see and isn't used to, and the Metropolitan doesn't really have the system in place to do that, so they really struggled with that sound system.

[24:34] Andrew Child: So I think finding a production that could, you know, honor the operatic elements of this show, do them justice, have the cast and the performers who have this training and this background to do this music justice, but then bring it, you know, somewhere downtown, bring it somewhere that it's in a smaller, tighter space, and you know, smaller than the Met.

[25:04] Andrew Child: So, you know, we're not talking like a black box and then belt everyone's faces off in the front row, but somewhere that we can honor this also as a piece of musical theater, because I don't think that there's anything wrong with that, with saying that this is really more of a musical than it is a grand opera.

[25:24] Andrew Child: So maybe we don't put this at the Met. Maybe this has to be somewhere in Times Square, you know.

[25:33] Robert W. Schneider: Got it.

[25:34] Andrew Child: And you know, one of the things you were talking about is the major contribution of The Merry WIDOW as I understand it is it's the first musical piece in which every element is moving the story forward in some way or is central to the development of the characters and development of the plot.

[25:53] Andrew Child: So we got that. Can we talk a little bit about the commercial aspect of it, which is the merchandising, this merchandising craze? Can you elaborate on that a little bit for us?

[26:04] Andrew Child: And what exactly were they merchandising?

[26:07] Andrew Child: Yeah, I mean, they had pretty much branded everything and wherever this show would go, because again, we touched upon the Lucille Duff Gordon designs for the London premiere, and pretty much wherever this show would go, women would want to dress like The Merry WIDOW.

[26:30] Andrew Child: So she had a line of corsets. I mean, The Merry WIDOW. I mean, they were making bank selling corsets that were specifically this is Hanna Gloari's, this is what she looks like. And I mean, beyond what we can quantify, sorry, I'm going off on a little tangent here, of you know, directly how this historically impacted musical theater.

[26:51] Andrew Child: I think Dolly Gallagher Levi entering the Harmonia Gardens, like it's a direct homage, it's a direct lift off from Act Three, entering Shea Mac Scenes for Hannah in this show.

[27:07] Andrew Child: But yeah, she's got that dropped waist, so she's got this totally different look that was not what women were wearing. And so they could merchandise anything. Big hats are the other thing that Hannah Gloari kind of heralded in.

[27:24] Andrew Child: And so women wanted to look like The Merry WIDOW. And so from there, it's just you could sell anything. So there were MERRY WIDOW cocktails, there were, I forget what it is, but there is a MERRY WIDOW like tea sandwich. I forget if it's like cucumber and mayonnaise, something nasty.

[27:42] Andrew Child: There was a brand of cigars, there were liquors that were rebranded to be MERRY WIDOW themed, and then on top of that, and most significantly, we've got the sheet music being pushed out, like really pushed out to the public, like it's being rearranged as vocal arrangements for your sitting room, so you can sing it with your family, and it's being rearranged in dance arrangements for all the clubs, and that was probably in researching this chapter, that was the most gratifying part was that I could search through all these databases for, you know, where are Kern, where are Rogers, where are Hammerstein mentioning The Merry WIDOW, and all three of them have concrete times when they talk about either being with their family or being in a cafe and being struck by the beauty of this music.

[28:41] Andrew Child: And Richard Rogers, of course, it's his childhood. It's that his mother's playing these songs on the piano and he's being brought up with them because he's younger, you know, than the other two. So yeah, so the merchandising, while it's, you know, we can roll our eyes and we can say, Oh wow, so they did, you know, they were Disney theatricals before Disney Theatricals was even a thing.

[29:07] Andrew Child: Thank God for the merchandising, because it's that merchandising, it's that sale of just any ephemera from this show that really cemented this within the mainstream, the popular consciousness. So thank God that sheet music got out there.

[29:28] Andrew Child: And if you're over 21 years of age and you want to enjoy a MERRY WIDOW cocktail, the ingredients are driver mouth, Benedictine, bitters, absinthe, and lemon peel. It's a gym-based gym and gym. Maybe that's why everyone loved the show so much, because they were getting inebriated at the bar.

[29:49] Andrew Child: Up on that. One of the things I found so fascinating, and I'm trying to think of other instances throughout history where we might have seen this, is that The Merry WIDOW was censored in a lot of ways because of the First World War. Would you say that The Merry WIDOW was one of the first shows to be quote unquote canceled because of its authors and its sentiment?

[30:19] Andrew Child: Well, and here's the thing, I guess, is that I guess canceled would be exactly the right word because it's again we can't really call it censorship. Like the American government didn't say, no, you can't put this show on stage, it's not allowed, it's anti-American sentiment, which obviously we see throughout theater. We see things like that happening.

[30:43] Andrew Child: We see from the beginning, you know, governments saying, No, you can't say that, that word's not allowed. This was a popular public opinion just saying, not even a boycott. It was just like, we don't want to see this anymore. It didn't fall out of fashion, it just totally shifted the context that it was being presented within because of what was going on in the world.

[31:10] Andrew Child: So I guess saying that it was kind of canceled is exactly right, because it wasn't this organized response to it. It was just people saying, we want something else, we want something different, because of XYZ, XYZ, XYZ external factors. The show didn't change, but our sentiments have changed.

[31:32] Andrew Child: And I'll throw in there, this is just an interesting little tidbit. Although there's huge Jewish involvement in the show, and Franz Lehár's wife herself is Jewish, this was a favorite of Adolf Hitler's. He went to see the original production. I believe it's documented as three times, but believed that he could have been there more. That this was like really popular for him.

[31:56] Andrew Child: So yeah. So I understand why this show has fallen out of context over a number of different times. Right. World War I, then World War II, yeah. But that's not why it was canceled, and you know, interestingly, we're seeing it again on Broadway, the same year that Oklahoma's coming out.

[32:15] Andrew Child: So again, it ebbs and flows how Americans are feeling about Austria and Germany and Hungary. It really ebbs and flows here. Andrew, my last question for you is can you pinpoint other shows that if we had not had The Merry WIDOW, we would not have had fill in the blank?

[32:37] Andrew Child: Yes, yes. And the reason I can is because that was a whole part of the chapter that I wrote that I then had to say, this is all very much speculation. Like I can't really, this is just my opinion, this is my belief.

[32:51] Andrew Child: But you know, speculate away.

[32:53] Andrew Child: I will speculate away, yeah. The big one for me is Hello, Dolly! That character wouldn't exist. This idea of this older woman being celebrated as this eccentric, as this widow, you know.

[33:11] Andrew Child: And then just down to her costume design, which again, it feels more like an homage. It feels like there's an awareness there that there is this tradition of the MERRY WIDOW character. I think that like I had mentioned before, Dumer Dumer Reitersman, I think that that sets up the coy, flirtatious hypothetical love song that is so synonymous with Rogers and Hammerstein.

[33:40] Andrew Child: I think they definitely it can still be synonymous with them. I'm not saying they stole it, but I do think that it wouldn't exist without Dumer Duma Reitermen. I think that this idea of having the obviously from Shakespeare, from way way back, we've got the comedic love plot running alongside the more serious love plot, but this idea where the two stories are interconnected and dependent upon each other.

[34:11] Andrew Child: I don't think it comes from The Merry WIDOW, but I think that The Merry WIDOW does that well. I think we see that really hitting its peak with Guys and Dolls, something like that. And then like I said before, other than the artistic influence, this business model, we see it now, you know, and that's what every show kind of tries to be, or what every show's PR team wants it to be, you know.

[34:38] Andrew Child: I'm sure if Moulin Rouge could take off with a huge cocktail, its PR team would be all over it right now, you know. So I think, yeah, artistically, from a public relations standpoint, from a cultural standpoint, it just sets the mold in so many different ways.

[35:00] Robert W. Schneider: Well, it's so fascinating to see all of these things that surround us on a daily basis. I mean, you can go into the Drama Bookshop, which is pretty much, you know, Hamilton central in terms of memorabilia that you can buy, and that's not a pejorative thing, it's just an example.

[35:16] Robert W. Schneider: So it's so cool, I think, or it's so interesting, I should say, to see how all of these things that surround us today all emanated from this operetta from over a hundred years ago. So thank you so much for drawing such a clear link from the past to the present.

[35:31] Robert W. Schneider: And Andrew, thank you so much for joining us today. It was an absolute pleasure. Friends, please make sure to purchase a copy of Fifty Key Stage Musicals by visiting Routledge.com or by clicking in today's show description.

[35:43] Robert W. Schneider: If you want to learn more about The Merry WIDOW, please also review the links in the below description. I'm Robert W. Schneider, and thank you for listening to Fifty Key Stage Musicals, the podcast. Bye-bye.