The Merry Widow – review

Royal Festival Hall, LondonLehár's wonderful operetta, freshly topical in its themes of European national bankruptcy, still holds its place in the repertoire; it's the only one of his pieces that does. Both ENO and Opera North have staged it in recent years, and it's easy to hear why. But the operetta vocal tradition, which set store by elegantly sensuous singing, and which was still so strong in the mid-20th century, no longer exists outside Vienna; in this English-language concert performance...

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