Word: meilhac
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Year's Eve attraction. The score is second-rate Offenbach, first performed in 1868, well after the glories of La Belle Helens (1864) and Orpheus (1858); but it is still the work of a master in his field. The libretto is by two hacks of genius, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, who vaguely based it (as they did their celebrated book for Carmen) on a work by Prosper Mérimée.* As a pretty street singer who ditches her poor but honest boy friend (Baritone Theodor Uppman) for a viceroy of Peru, Soprano Patrice Munsel...
...first. It was originally a French play called Le Réveillon (The Awakening), written by sometime Offenbach librettists Henry Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy in 1872, and based on a Berlin comedy of 1851. Strauss set a German adaptation to music two years later. Since then, it has been called, in various productions, A Wonderful Night, Fly-by-Night, The Merry Countess, Champagne Sec, etc., and, in the latest Broadway version (TIME, Nov. 9, 1942), Rosalinda...