The Merry Widow (1934)

Franz Lehar was the most gifted and successful composer of operetta of the 20th century, and the most important composer of operetta after Johann Strauss Jr. His most famous work, The Merry Widow, may be the most recorded operetta in the world, and is in the repertory of numerous international opera companies; it has also been filmed several times, including three times in America – in 1924 (by Erich Von Stroheim), in 1934 with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, and in 1952 with Lana Turner and Fernando Lamas. The title waltz is sufficiently well known to middle-class American audiences to have figured as a key clue in the classic 1942 Hitchcock movie Shadow of a Doubt, set in a small California town. But he is also responsible for a half dozen other of the most beautiful operettas ever written.

Franz Lehár's operetta The Land of Smiles provided Richard Tauber with the greatest hit of his entire career: «You are my heart's delight».