Vilja-Lied (Die lustige Witwe)

Victor Léon and Leo Stein adapted Henri Meilhac's comedy L'attaché d'ambassade, and Lehár set it in a few months. The Theater an der Wien expected little: the management offered a small budget and second-hand costumes and, by several accounts, tried to buy the authors out shortly before the opening on 30 December 1905. Within a few years Die lustige Witwe had been played in dozens of languages and had made its composer wealthy. Its success reset Viennese operetta, pushing the genre towards the more openly sentimental, waltz-centred manner that Lehár himself would spend three decades varying.