DA GEH' ICH ZU MAXIM
Created on 11/02/2023Latest update on 28/11/2023
Artist: Louis Treumann
Author: Franz Lehar/Leo Stein/Victor Leon
Year: 1906
As Count Danilo in the original cast of Lehár's first operetta Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow, La Veuve Joyeuse) first staged in December 1905 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. Aria from the First Act. Adolf Hitler loved it (and probably dreamed about going to Maxim's soon as he'd conquered Paris). Storyline based upon comedy play L'Attaché d'Ambassade by Henri Meilhac (1861). In 1906 Treumann and his female counterpart recorded their most popular aria's.
Covers:
- 1934:
Maurice Chevalier [in Ernst Lubitsch film Die Lustige Witwe (La Veuve Joyeuse)]
- 1941:
Dmitri Shostakovich [the recurring, menacing bolero-theme illustrating the approaching Third Reich troops, parodied in the Allegretto of his 7th Symphony named after his hometown Leningrad; composed during the siege; he must have known about Hitler's musical tastes]
- 1950:
- 1951:
- 1953:
- 1958:
- 1968:
- 1986:
Die Lustige Witwe was of course recorded many times before Sjostakovitsj persiflated this Maxim-passage. So be it. That's not The Originals' concern. The Orginals' raison d'être starts with Leningrad and investigates back in time from there.
