Between the initial conception in 1848 of a project on the Siegfried legend comprising a single work, Siegfried’s Tod, and its subsequent expansion in 1851 with the addition of Der junge Siegfried as a ‘prequel’ about the hero’s early life, Richard Wagner turned against Giacomo Meyerbeer in public denunciations in ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’ (1850) and Oper und Drama (1850–1). Changes in the treatment of the Mime–Siegfried relationship between 1848 and 1851 as well as similarities between Wagner’s characterisations of Meyerbeer and his portrayal of Mime in the 1851 sources suggest that Wagner’s animosity towards his former mentor informed a new conception of the dwarf. The troubled Mime–Siegfried relationship that crystallised in 1851 allowed Wagner to give symbolic, aesthetic form not only to his criticisms of Meyerbeer as man and artist but also to his own new creative path. That Meyerbeer by 1851 had come to represent to Wagner the personal and artistic deficiencies of all Jews necessarily also means that Wagner’s projection of Meyerbeer into Mime in Der junge Siegfried carried with it a more generally anti-Jewish message, as is frequently asserted in the literature.

Operetta held an ambiguous position within Nazi German entertainment culture: while suitably diverting and escapist, many of the most successful hits had Jewish authors and were thus increasingly avoided by theatre directors. To replenish the Reich’s performable repertory, Goebbels founded the ‘Reichsstelle für Musikbearbeitungen’, whose revisions of classical works including Handel’s oratorios and Mozart’s Da Ponte operas have been widely discussed. This article focuses on one of the institution’s many operetta commissions, Viennese satirist Rudolf Weys’s unfinished 1944 version of Franz Lehár’s Der Rastelbinder (1902), a box office success that featured an itinerant Jewish peddler as the central character. Weys’s revisions as well as his own story show that this kind of Reichsstelle commission could be a lifeline for artists who could not afford to attract attention or leave the Reich.

Franz Lehár’s Die lustige Witwe (1905) was conceived during a period of instability in both operetta and Viennese life. Considering the music and reception of both Witwe and some of its immediate, now-forgotten predecessors, this article argues that the operetta’s dramatic and musical dualism between urbane, Offenbach-like Paris and folksy, imaginary Pontevedro can be read both as a response to operetta’s conflicting priorities of satire and sentiment and as a depiction of the multi-ethnic world of working-class Vienna. The operetta’s unusual popularity, subsequent influence and exceptionally long performance history have tended to obscure these more immediate concerns.