"Siegfried Get Your Annie"

On the stage long trod by waltzing countesses and czardas-dancing gypsies a girl in rundown shoes and a beat-up hat marched to the footlights and belted out a number called Alles aus Naturverstand (meaning "Everything by Common Sense"). Americans in the audience recognized it as Doin' What Comes Natur'lly. Annie Get Your Gun had settled down in Vienna, and its arrival had precipitated another battle in the running musical war between partisans of old-fashioned Viennese operetta and fans of new-style American musical comedy.

Virtue & Pornography. The producer of Vienna's Annie, Austrian-born U.S. Citizen Marcel Prawy, had already successfully staged Kiss Me, Kate in Vienna (TIME, March 5, 1956). His announcement that he was bringing Annie Oakley and the Wild West to the Danube shore outraged critics. They rushed fiercely to defend the virtue of their Merry Widows, the dignity of their Countess Maritzas and the artistic solvency of their Gypsy Barons. American musicals, said critics, were "pornographic" and not fit for "Kulturstaaten." Furthermore, the government-subsidized Volksoper should be playing native Austrian composers. (Annie's defenders pointed out that native operetta composers have not written a note worth hearing for decades.)

During rehearsals, when Producer Prawy replaced ten of his orchestra's staid members--despite their civil-service status--with ten brass players from a leading swing band, he provoked manifestos and a protest meeting. Passions were further inflamed when the news spread that leading male roles were cast with distinguished opera singers--rising Baritone Eberhard Waechter as Frank Butler; Karl Doench, famed for his Beckmesser, as Chief Sitting Bull; Tenor Max Lorenz, a renowned Siegfried, as Buffalo Bill. After a rehearsal, onetime Metropolitan Soprano Brenda Lewis, the Annie Oakley and only American in a cast of 80, purred: "I had the impression that Lorenz thought he was playing Siegfried Get Your Annie."

Little Difference? But on opening night, the Irving Berlin tunes came across clear and forceful, and the lyrics produced their laughs on cue. (Some of the dialogue, considered too risque, was altered: e.g., Annie's line, "If you hadna' done it, I'd a shot yew right in the belly button," became "I would have shot over my shoulder and knocked the button off your vest.") Viennese brought up on the beefy Volksoper chorus were especially delighted by Prawy's slimmed-down chorus line. At the end, the audience cheered.

Vienna is showing signs of resigning itself to the American era (the Vienna Conservatory of Music even offers a course in American musical comedy). Moreover, incurable operetta addicts are beginning to pretend that there really is not so much difference between the old and the new. Said one dreamy rationalizer: "I can see it all. Let's say Frank Butler is really a Hungarian cavalry officer who had to leave his country--some disgraceful duel over an actress. Annie is really the daughter of a millionaire Chicago meat packer. Call the whole thing The Duchess of Chicago and we'll feel right at home again."

As for successful Producer Prawy, he is already planning his next import from America: My Fair Lady.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.