28^th Festival Season - 2007

The Duchess of Chicago

By: Emmerich Kálmán

Premiere: Theater an der Wien, Vienna, 5 April 1928

Mary Lloyd, the very beautiful, very rich, and very spoiled daughter of Chicago's hot dog king, travels to Europe with her society girlfriends to see who can succeed in buying the most unobtainable item, with the winner receiving one million dollars. In a Budapest dance hall, she becomes intrigued with the visiting Crown Prince of Sylvaria, but throws a tantrum when he refuses her request that they dance a Charleston or fox-trot, insisting rather that a waltz or polka would be more appropriate. Mary buys the royal palace, cables her father that soon she will buy the Prince that goes with it, and promises all that before long he will be dancing to her tune. By prearranged plan, the Prince, however, is to soon marry his cousin, Princess Rosemarie, who confesses that she has no interest in a royal husband; her attention becomes increasingly fixed on Mary's private secretary, Mr. Bondy. The growing affection between Mary and the Prince is undermined when he learns from her girlfriends that, apparently, he is nothing but the means to her million-dollar prize. We won't give away the ending…but let it be said that the final curtain falls as the Prince insists on "a tender fox-trot with Mary."

The Duchess of Chicago was revolutionary in that it brought Viennese operetta fully into the jazz age. Its score is an engaging blend of the waltzes and csardases of the Old World with the Charlestons, fox-trots, and blues that defined the musical world of 1920's America. With songs like Up in heaven a jazz band is playing, We ladies from the U.S.A., and a fox-trot version of Beethoven's 5^th Symphony, this show ranks right up there with the composer's Countess Maritza and The Gypsy Princess.