Franz Lehar: Das Land Des Lachelns – Piotr Beczala

   in Opera Now (Jan, 2019)
Das Land Des Lächelns (The Land of Smiles) is the rather sad Franz Lehár 1929 operetta that never duplicated the success of The Merry Widow, but provided the Richard Tauber mega-hit, ‘Dein is mein ganzes Herz’, (You Are My Heart’s Delight). Sad because of the rare sight of clouds obscuring the perennial sunshine of the operetta world, leading to an unhappy ending as soprano Lisa abandons her husband to his native China, having found it impossible to assimilate or even find a welcome. A not untimely story, one ponders. Filmed in Zurich in 2017, Andreas Homoki’s production is simple and unapologetic in its portrayal of a stereotypical China of the …