Emmerrich Kalman
Emmerich Kálmán - Gräfin Mariza
Gundula Janowitz, Noemi Nadelmann, Nelly Boschkowa, Erna Schickel, Adolf Dallapozza, Sándor Németh, Karl Dönch, Rudolf Buczolich, Alfred Böhm
Ballett, Chor und Orchester der Seefestspiele Mörbisch
Zigeunerkapelle: Gergely-Werner Szücs
Dirigent: Uwe Theimer
Inszenierung: Robert Herzl
Seefestspiele Mörbisch 1987
Die Bajadere is an operetta in 3 acts composed by Emmerich Kalman. The libretto was written by Julius Brammer and Alfred Grünwald. The work premiered in Vienna at the Carltheater on 23 December 1921. With the English-language title of The Yankee Princess, the work received its first New York City performances in October 1922.
Kálmán Imre : A Bajadér
Budapesti Operettszínház
Darimonde Odette.........................Miklósa Erika
Radjami, indiai herceg...................Dolhai Attila
Fülöp, író.......................................Csere László
Simone..........................................Oszvald Marika
Marietta.........................................Szendy Szilvi
Szapáry, magyar újságíró.............Kerényi Miklós Máté
Parker, angol ezredes...................Marik Péter
Dewa, a herceg szárnysegédje....Dézsy Szabó Gábor
A színház igazgatója....................Jantyik Csaba
A színház titkára...........................Sánta László
Vezényel: Makláry László
2009
Roles
Mariette soprano
Napoleon St. Cloche tenor
Odette Darimonde soprano
Philippe Louis La Tourette bass
Prince Radjami tenor
Franz Fehringer singt "O Bajadere"
Kölner Rundfunkorchester
Franz Marszalek
Wiesław Bednarek - "Bajadera", (Aria Radżamiego).
Synopsis
Time: 1921
Act 1
Act One begins after a performance in Paris by the great singing actress, Odette Darimonde, who is starring at the Châtelet in the operetta La Bayadère. After witnessing many of her performances, the young Indian Prince Radjami von Lahore has fallen helplessly in love and asks the theater manager to arrange an introduction. He is anxious to make her his bride immediately, for his parents have an arranged marriage waiting for him back home. Odette makes it clear to him, however, that she has no interest in him. Radjami engages the help of a young man, Napoleon St. Cloche, to assist him in his cause. Napoleon has his own worries as he is trying to seduce a young married lady, Marietta, to whom he brags of world travels, tiger hunting in India, and, in fact, his acquaintance with the Prince. The Prince again expresses his love to Odette, hypnotising her with roses, and begs her to marry him. At an impromptu party he is throwing at his palace, she appears with roses in hand and seemingly under his spell.
Act 2
Act Two takes place in the Parisian palace of the Prince. At the party, Radjami tells Odette that before the night is over, she will succumb to his advances, all this as she is teaching him to waltz. Fully intent on a wedding that evening, Radjami calls on his "friend" Napoleon to be a witness, so impressing Marietta that she agrees to divorce her husband, Louis-Philipp, and wed her persistent suitor. As the ceremony uniting Radjami and Odette proceeds, she awakens from her trance, mocks his arrogance in assuming that she would ever be his, and leaves him humiliated. The act ends as he promises all that she will indeed love him some day.
Act 3
Act Three takes place at a little bar in Paris. Marietta and Napoleon are now married, but she has learned of his exaggerations and now finds him as boring as Louis-Philipp, who appears smartly dressed and newly appointed by Radjami as counsul to India. Napoleon, who is just as bored with Marietta as she with him, tells Louis-Philipp that he can have her back. Radjami engages Pimprinette, the theater claque leader, to help him stage a scene whereby it appears as if Radjami has returned to India. Odette is grief-stricken. Radjami appears, assured finally of her love, as she falls into his arms.
Emmerich Kálmán (24 October 1882 – 30 October 1953) was a Hungarian composer of operettas.
Kálmán was born Imre Koppstein in Siófok, then in Austria-Hungary, on the southern shore of Lake Balaton, in a Jewish family. Kálmán initially intended to become a concert pianist, but because of early-onset arthritis, he focused on composition instead. He studied music theory and composition at the National Hungarian Royal Academy of Music (then the Budapest Academy of Music), where he was a fellow student of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály under Hans Kössler.
His early symphonic poems Saturnalia and Endre es Johanna were well-received, although he failed to achieve publication. He also composed piano music and wrote many songs: a song cycle on poems by Ludwig Jacobowski and a song collection published under the title Dalai.
However, the popularity of his humorous cabaret songs led him towards the composition of operettas. His first great success was Tatárjárás – Ein Herbstmanöver in German, meaning Autumn maneuver, although the English title is The Gay Hussars, which was first staged at the Lustspieltheater in Budapest, on 22 February 1908. Thereafter he moved to Vienna, where he achieved worldwide fame through his operettas Der Zigeunerprimas, Die Csárdásfürstin, Gräfin Mariza, and Die Zirkusprinzessin.
Kálmán and Franz Lehár were the leading composers of what has been called the "Silver Age" of Viennese operetta during the first quarter of the 20th century. He became well known for his fusion of Viennese waltz with Hungarian csárdás. Even so, polyphonically and melodically, Kálmán was a devoted follower of Giacomo Puccini, while in his orchestration methods he employed principles characteristic of Tchaikovsky's music.
Despite his Jewish origins he was one of Adolf Hitler's favorite composers. After the Anschluss, he rejected Hitler's offer to become an 'honorary Aryan' and was forced to move first to Paris, then to the United States, settling in California in 1940.
Following his emigration, performances of his works were prohibited in Nazi Germany. He emigrated back to Vienna from New York in 1949 before moving in 1951 to Paris, where he died.
Emmerich Kalman
(1882-1953)