The Chocolate Soldier (Der tapfere Soldat): Light Opera, Orchestra Accompaniment, Condensed Score

Oscar Straus (1870-1954) composed The Chocolate Soldier (Der tapfere Soldat) in 1908, immediately following the international success of his Ein Walzertraum (1907). A three-act operetta with a German libretto by Rudolf Bernauer and Leopold Jacobson, it is based on George Bernard Shaw's 1894 anti-romantic comedy Arms and the Man, set against the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885 and satirizing conventional notions of military courage and romantic heroism. Shaw permitted the adaptation only under restrictive conditions (including that his dialogue and character names not be used and that the work be presented as a parody) and he subsequently disliked the sentimental operetta treatment of his play, even as the adaptation achieved enormous international popularity. The story centers on Nadina Popoff, a young Bulgarian woman engaged to the supposedly heroic officer Alexius, whose romantic ideas about warfare are disrupted when Bumerli, a pragmatic Swiss mercenary fighting for Serbia, escapes into her bedroom. Rather than carrying ammunition, Bumerli keeps chocolates in his cartridge pouch, earning him the nickname "the Chocolate Soldier," and as his honesty and common sense expose the absurdities of the other characters' heroic pretensions, Nadina gradually realizes that she loves him rather than Alexius, while Alexius finds a more suitable partner in Mascha, bringing the complicated romantic entanglements to a comic resolution. The Chocolate Soldier received its world premiere on November 14, 1908, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, conducted by Robert Stolz, with Grete Holm as Nadina, Max Pallenberg as Colonel Popoff, and Karl Streitmann as Alexius. The original Viennese production ran 62 performances, but the operetta achieved even greater success in the English-speaking world. Stanislaus Stange's English adaptation opened at New York's Lyric Theatre on September 13, 1909, running 295 performances and subsequently receiving numerous Broadway revivals, while the soaring waltz song "My Hero" became the score's most enduring individual number. Today, The Chocolate Soldier (Der tapfere Soldat) is no longer a regular fixture of the international operetta repertoire and is performed far less frequently than the best-known works of Johann Strauss II, Lehár, or Kálmán, but occasional professional revivals and recordings have preserved interest in its elegant Viennese score, comic treatment of military romanticism, and historical importance as one of Oscar Straus's greatest international successes. "My Hero," in particular, continues to represent the work independently in vocal recitals and recordings. Instrumentation: 2(both dPicc).2(2nd dEH).2.2: 4.2.3.1: Timp.Perc(3-4): Hp: Str (4.4.3.3.3 in set): Banda (2 Tpt: SnrDr): Vocal soli (7 roles, SSATTBB): Mix Chorus. Reprint edition.