By composing operettas such as The Merry Widow and The Land of Smiles, Franz Lehár gave his letters of nobility to a genre considered light-hearted, but no less lacking in musical richness. Born in Komárom (now Komárno, Slovakia) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire on April 30, 1870, he was the son of a military bandmaster who had to change garrisons frequently. The young Lehár grew up in Presburg (Bratislava), Ödenburg, Karlsburg (Alba Iulia) and Cluj-Napoca, learning Hungarian from his mother and German from his father, signing his name Lehár Ferenc in the Hungarian style. He learned to play the piano and attended school in Budapest, then in Šternberk, before entering the Prague Conservatory at the age of twelve, where his teachers included Antonín Bennewitz (violin), Josef Bohuslav Foerster (harmony) and Antonín Dvořák (composition), who encouraged him to compose rather than consider a career as a violinist. He also took private lessons with Zdeněk Fibich and Eusebius Mandyczewski, on the recommendation of Johannes Brahms. Sensitive to the art of Bedřich Smetana and Dvořák, he developed his sense of melody and orchestration. However, before he could put his ideas into practice, he had to prove himself professionally, and was hired as an orchestral musician in Barmen and Elberfeld, then with the 50th infantry regiment run by his father, whom he succeeded. The youngest conductor in the Austro-Hungarian army, he held a number of posts between 1890 and 1902, in Losoncz, Pola, Trieste, Budapest, then Vienna from 1899. His first opera was Kukuška, composed in 1896 and premiered in Leipzig, before being revised as Tatjana in 1905. His early marches and waltzes, notably "Gold und Silber " (1899), were well received by the public, but it was in operetta that Lehár made his name at the Theater an der Wien, with Wiener Frauen and Der Rastelbinder, presented at the end of 1902. After the death of Johann Strauss Jr. in 1899, he took over, ushering in a new golden age of operetta with the resounding success of Die lustige Witwe(The Merry Widow), based on a libretto by Victor Léon and Leo Stein after Meilhac's comedy L'attaché d'ambassade. Premiered on December 30, 1905, the show was performed three hundred thousand times until 1948, and was the subject of films directed by Michael Curtiz, Erich von Stroheim and Ernst Lubitsch. Tunes such as the duets "Da geh' ich zu Maxim " and "Lippen schweigen", Vilja's song ("Vilja-Lied") and the widow's waltz ("Lustige-Witwe-Waltzer") have been performed in many languages. Less performed since then, Der Graf von Luxemburg(The Count of Luxembourg, 1909), Zigeunerliebe(Gypsy Love, 1910) and Eva (1911) were nonetheless triumphantly received before the outbreak of the First World War, which marked the end of an era. However, Lehár had enough composing talent to bounce back and adapt to the tastes of the day. After Der Sterngucker (1916), which was revived as Gigolette ten years later, he presented A Pacsirta to Budapest audiences on February 1, 1918, which was revived in German under the title Wo die Lerche Singt in Vienna, and remained popular at a time of upheaval that led to the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1920, he incorporated mazurka into Die blaue Mazur, inaugurated in Vienna on May 28 and set in Poland at the turn of the century. Far from falling into disuse despite the arrival of jazz and music-hall revues, Lehár offered his fourth one-act "pocket operetta" with Frühling(Spring, January 20, 1922), performed in the basement of the Theater an der Wien, at the Kabarett Hölle, and broadcast live on the radio. He then resumed his interrupted work on Frasquita (May 12, 1922), a more ambitious work in three acts presented in the great hall of the Viennese theater and revived in a French version at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1933. Composed at the same time, Die gelbe Jacke(The Yellow Waistcoat, February 9, 1923) is set in China and offers a happy ending, unlike its successful "remake" under the title The Land of Smiles. This shift in tone towards drama begins with Paganini (Théâtre Johann Strauss, October 30, 1925), dedicated to the memory of the famous violinist. After the last positive vision of Clo-Clo the previous year, Lehár turned his attention to the opera that had once brought him no luck, and enlisted the services of the great German tenor of the time, Richard Tauber, in a role to suit him. He continued in this vein with Der Zarewitsch (Berlin, 1927), Friederike (Berlin, 1928) and Das Land des Lächelns(The Land of Smiles, Berlin, October 10, 1929), a thorough reworking that gave rise to the famous aria "Dein ist mein ganze Herze", Tauber's bravura piece. In 1934, Giuditta premiered at the Vienna Opera on January 20, representing the culmination of his work towards serious recognition, which he preferred to define as a "musical comedy". Here too, the aria "Freunde, das Leben ist lebenswert" was a success. During the decade, Lehár continued to revise his operettas, and wrote five compositions for the cinema, including Der Göttergatte (1937). Although he shot to fame with stage music, his output covered other forms too, such as the symphonic poem Il Guado (1894), the orchestral overture Eine Vision (Mein Jugend) (1907), piano pieces, a Concertino for violin and orchestra (1888) and the Hungarian Fantasy for violin and orchestra (1935). Married to a woman of Jewish origin, Sophie Paschkis, the composer came into the crosshairs of the Third Reich for his collaborations with Jewish librettists, before being spared for having taken Hungarian nationality at the end of the war, all the more so as his operettas were appreciated by the Nazi regime. In 1938, his wife was declared an "honorary Aryan", and he himself received two awards from Adolf Hitler, in Berlin (1939) and Vienna (1940), including the Goethe Medal. In 1943, he was allowed to travel to Switzerland to receive medical treatment for various ailments. Back in Bad Ischl, Austria, he died of cancer on October 24, 1948, aged 78.