Franz Lehar oder Das schlechte Gewissen der leichten Musik (Theatron)

"Franz Lehar or the Guilty Conscience of Light Music"
(Text in German)
Franz Lehar, the composer most freqently performed within his lifetime, still represents an unresolved dilemma for the historiography of music. In terms of modernism his music is of significance as a negative contrast to the products of the avant-garde, a significance as largely bound up with the implications of operetta on the plane of cultural sociology within the general aesthetic context of the 20th century.
If, as Adorno suggests, "art for entertainment purposes is in social terms the guilty conscience of its serious counterpart", then Lehar's operettas, hitherto neglected by musicologists as not warranting serious attention, would in fact demand to be taken seriously as the aesthetic guilty conscience of light music. Stefan Frey, Geb. 1962; Dr. phil., Studium der Theaterwissenschaft, Kunstgeschichte und Germanistik. Regisseur, Dramaturg, Librettist, Rundfunkjournalist und Autor zahlreicher Publikationen zur Operette. Lehrbeauftragter an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.