Operetta Season 2026

The Merry Widow
with the Corrado Abbati Company

Sunday, January 11 at the Donizetti Theatre

The Operette Season 2026 of the Donizetti Theater Foundation is just around the corner: on Sunday, January 11 (3:30 p.m.) the first of three titles on the bill is scheduled at the city’s main theater, The Merry Widow, a classic of the operetta repertoire brought to the stage on this occasion by the Compagnia Corrado Abbati.

An operetta in three parts by Franz Lehár to a libretto by Victor Léon and Leo Stein based on the play L’Attaché d’ambassade by Henri Meilhac, The Merry Widow is still one of the most performed shows in the world. And if it still fills theaters today and audiences enjoy it and applaud warmly, something special must be wrong with it. The Merry Widow is, in fact, a myth that despite its age shows no wrinkles. Built on fertile musical inventiveness, with iconic songs such as the march “Women, women eternal gods…,” the operetta rests on the sympathy of a text steeped in themes that are still relevant today: power, money, jealousies, love.

Compagnia Corrado Abbati’s edition makes the most of the innate theatrical sense and dynamic narrative that distinguish the performances of the director and actor who directs it, as well as a colorful staging that highlights the elegance of Lehár’s music with its iridescent, romantic hues and frenzied rhythmic jubilation. Starting from the term “lightness” given by Italo Calvino in the first chapter of the American Lectures, namely “lightness as a reaction to the weight of living,” and aware that in the collective imagination the term “operetta” is combined with the term “smile,” the director’s intention in this edition of The Merry Widow is not to deny what is the typical characteristic of operetta: the desire for reassuring emotions. The work was, therefore, to create a show capable of arousing cheerfulness, as, moreover, was the intention of the author who scattered The Merry Widow with many cues on a diplomatic plot, where secret desires and erotic or political interests are not hidden and are resolved to the rhythm of a waltz but also of a can-can. A rhythmic sweep that the director has taken into account, recreating a sense of elegance and balance of the theatrical machine, capable of capturing the jubilant and irrational momentum of joyous escapism. Also capable of arousing enthusiasm and desire to party together, breaking down the fourth wall to foster exchange and empathy between hall and stage.

Plot
At the Pontevedro embassy in Paris, there is great excitement. Mrs. Anna Glavari, the young widow of the very rich court banker, is arriving. The ambassador, Baron Zeta, has been instructed to find a Pontevedrian husband for the widow, and this is to keep the lady’s millions in dowry, back home. For if Mrs. Glavari were to pass into a second marriage with a Frenchman, her capital would leave the Pontevedrian National Bank and it would be economic ruin for Pontevedro. Njegus, chancellor of the embassy, is a bit too bungling for such an undertaking but there is Count Danilo who might do just fine. Njegus and Zeta try to convince him but he won’t hear of it. Between Danilo and Anna there had been a love affair that ended badly because of Danilo’s family. For her part, the widow, although she loves Danilo, does not want to show it and does everything to make him jealous. Meanwhile, another love story unfolds involving Valencienne, Zeta’s young wife, and Camillo de Rossillon, a French diplomat who assiduously woos her. The two meet at a kiosk. They are about to be surprised by Baron Zeta when Njegus manages to get Valencienne out in time and replace her with Anna. The widow surprised with Camillo! Everyone is upset, Danilo furiously leaves the party. Everything now seems compromised but Njegus, true Deus ex-machina, manages to dissolve the misunderstandings and get Anna and Danilo to confess their mutual love. The homeland is saved. From now on Mrs. Glavari will no longer be The Merry Widow, but the happy consort of Count Danilo Danilowitch.