Giuditta (sung in English)

Giuditta was Lehar's final work (1934), and it was premiered at the Vienna State Opera. With the political tensions in Austria building, Lehar, by now in his sixties, found little incentive to compose any more. He died in 1948 (the same year as Tauber) at the age of seventy-eight. As with the previous releases of The Czarevitch (CD-80395) and The Land of Smiles (CD-80419), the works are sung in English. It must have felt eminently fitting to Franz Lehár, himself a proficient violinist, to write an operetta based on episodes in the life of the great virtuoso Paganini. Dispensing with the idea of an overture for Paginini, he even caused the show to open with an extended violin solo, almost like a miniature concerto. The story is set in Italy, at the court of Princess Anna Elisa Bacchiocchi (sister to Napoleon), and the score contains Lehár's customary impassioned and beautiful love duets, and tenor arias (written with the great tenor of the times, Richard Tauber, in mind).