Okay, here's my question: at what point was the idea of giving operettas melancholy endings established? Was it Léhar's doing? In my experience, they're everywhere in his late work; I haven't seen them in any of his early works, but then, I may have seen too few to know for sure. My other data point is Puccini's La rondine, from 1916, which was originally to be an operetta and which had an extremely similar sort of ending, but where did the inspiration for that come from? I do not have any answers.
But anyway, this is one of those. Obviously. The Tsarevich (who is never otherwise named) is not interested in settling down, but then he meets a dancer, Sonia, and falls in love and they run away to Venice, but obviously, this idyll is not permitted to last. Fairly normal stuff. There's also a subplot which may be of interest, involving The Tsarevich's valet Ivan and his wife Mascha. She is annoyed with him, as well one might, because after years, they've never consummated their marriage, and Ivan's obsessive loyalty to The Tsarevich and his general rejection of any female help gives it a very obvious gay subtext. The resolution of their story is extremely dubious, though: also in Venice, a Venitian publican decides to help her by making her husband jealous, and this works super-well and suddenly he's super into her, which, even as operetta plot twists go, strains credulity a bit.
Well...regardless. Great music! If you think about who you'd consider the greatest opera composers of the twentieth century, you're probably going to come up with Puccini, Strauss, and Britten, maybe Henze, but I think Léhar's gotta be a dark horse candidate. Also, random observation: not so much from super-up-close, but from a moderate distance, The Tsarevich and Sonia look remarkably like pre- and post-transition Philosophy Tube respectively. Just thought I'd point that out for the benefit of no one.
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