Die Dollarprinzessin by Leo Fall, and: Zigeunerliebe by Franz Lehár, and: Die Zirkusprinzessin by Emmerich Kálmán (review)

The theater historian Marion Linhardt, in the introduction to the source collection Warum es der Operette so schlecht geht, described modern operetta performance practice as pulled between two extremes: on the one hand nostalgia trips for elderly fans and on the other reinvented works for new audiences (special issue of Maske und Kothurn 45 no. 1–2 [2001]: 1). She advocates for a performance practice that would modernize the genre’s titillating excitement while also maintaining a historical consciousness. As popular culture, operetta cannot be performed in a historically literal vacuum, and the balance between textual fidelity and current appeal can be hard to perfect. It should come as no surprise that yesterday’s fashionably updated operetta can look outmoded and campy today.

Such is the case here. These productions— Leo Fall’s Die Dollarprinzessin, Franz Lehár’s Zigeunerliebe and Emmerich Kálmán’s Die Zirkusprinzessin—were filmed for West German television in the 1960s and 70s. They were created, like the original works, for a wide public. Their audiences grew up with early recordings and broadcasts of these now-forgotten works, and the films attempt to link childhood memories of Richard Tauber with the then-current aesthetic of polyester and lounge music. The adaptations are free: scores are sliced and diced and often drastically shortened, librettos undergo major changes. The acting tends towards the oversized and stiff. But these are also each the only videos available of each respective operettas. Their dated excesses are enough to make any scholar long for Werktreue, but when taken on their own terms they have a certain charm.

The most straightforward is Die Zirkusprinzessin, filmed in 1969, whose score and libretto survive more or less intact from the 1926 Viennese original. The plot is classic late Silver Age operetta (with a libretto by the Alfred Grünwald/Julius Brammer team), a drama of two couples separated by social difference in an exotic setting. A renegade Russian arisocrat enjoys an incognito career as a Moscow circus daredevil named Mr. X, but his double life threatens his love for the beautiful, rich widow Fedora. In the last act, the action moves to Vienna, where it is revealed that sidekick Toni, proclaimed to be the Austrian “archduke’s son” is actually the son of the proprietor of a hotel called The Archduke. (While the empire was gone, its ghosts remained, though the setting is in fact pre-Russian Revolution.) The score is less memorable than Kálmán’s more popular Csárdásfürstin and Gräfin Mariza, but still catchy. The tenor number “Zwei Märchenaugen” is probably the only song that will be familiar to casual operetta fans.

The incorporation of circus acts and large-scale revue-style production numbers is typical of 1926, when operetta writers decided if they couldn’t beat their competitors they could at least imitate them. Such spectacle was doubtlessly impressive on-stage (as the premiere’s reviews attest), but it’s less compelling on this small screen, particularly due to the clumsy use of stunt doubles. The cast is talented but disappointing. Rudolf Schock was the leading operetta matinee idol of the postwar era, but at this late point in his career his voice sounds rather dry and worn out, nor does he possess much screen presence as the mysterious Mr. X. Ingeborg Hallstein as Fedora similarly lacks charisma, but sings well. As can often happen in these operettas, the second couple of Peter Karner, as...