About the work
Paganini is a three-act operetta with music by Franz Lehár and a libretto by Paul Knepler and Bela Jenbach, built around the violinist Niccolò Paganini. Lehár himself conducted the premiere on 30 October 1925 at the Johann Strauss Theatre in Vienna, with Carl Clewing in the title role.
Plot
The violinist Paganini is playing in a village inn when Princess Maria Anna Elisa Bacciochi hears him and falls in love. When Napoleon learns of the affair, he has the musician driven out of the city; the princess helps him escape after learning of his advances toward other women. At the border the two part for good as Paganini resumes his concert career.
Cultural significance
The work opens Lehár's later, more serious creative period, in which operetta gives way to opera-like drama. Received coolly in Vienna, it became one of Lehár's great successes once Richard Tauber took over the role in Berlin from January 1926.