Music: The Count of Luxemburg

"Americans," Franz Lehar once complained, "know me only as the creator of The Merry Widow"

But how well they knew The Merry Widow! In 1907, the Widow's gay Viennese charm had captured Broadway. Merry Widow waltzes and Merry Widow hats swept the U.S. And the U.S. has pretty well stayed swept ever since.

Of his more than 30 operettas, Lehar's own favorite was the Count of Luxemburg. "My friends often say," he wrote, "that I am like [the] Count of Luxemburg; they are perhaps not altogether wrong . . . I have always enjoyed life and society, the conversation of pretty women...

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