A sugar rush for the eyes: Glyndebourne’s The Merry Widow reviewed

In 1905, shortly before the world première of The Merry Widow, the Viennese theatre manager Wilhelm Karczag got cold feet and tried to pull it. He offered Franz Lehar hard cash to withdraw the score, and when that failed, he rushed it on under-rehearsed, using second-hand sets from an older show. Or so the story goes anyway. Karczag couldn’t know that within a decade The Merry Widow would become the most successful piece of musical theatre in human history up to that point: an all-conquering global brand that gave its name to hats, corsets, cigarettes and a rather nice cocktail (equal measures gin and vermouth, splashed with absinthe, Bénédictine and bitters, in case you’re curious). In the 1920s an American firm even marketed Merry Widow condoms.

I didn’t manage to check the Glyndebourne gift shop, but there was never much likelihood of them selling the Widow short. Cal McCrystal’s new staging is a sugar rush for the eyes; a gorgeous, rose-tinted swirl of belle-époque opulence, framed (thanks to Gary McCann’s designs) in an ornate silver frame that doubles as a cinema screen. The cast and titles are projected as the Prelude plays (it’s performed in English, by the way), as if we’re about to watch some classic movie musical. Men in gold braid and tailcoats line a grand staircase, doffing their hats in unison. Mist cascades downstage as Hanna (Danielle de Niese) and Danilo (German Olvera) sing a moonlit love duet. You get the idea: McCrystal has said that he had MGM in mind, and he delivers in spades.

And then Olvera trips drunkenly at the top of that staircase, tumbles head first down its entire height and lands flat on his face at the bottom. That’s the other thing: McCrystal is known for a particular brand of (often broad) physical comedy.