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The Student Prince is an operetta in a prologue and four acts with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly. It is based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster's play Old Heidelberg. The piece has a score with some of Romberg's most enduring and beautiful tunes, including "Golden Days", "Drinking Song", "Deep in My Heart, Dear", "Just We Two" and "Serenade" ("Overhead the moon is beaming"). It was staged by J. C. Huffman and was the longest-running Broadway show of the 1920s. Even Show Boat, the most enduring musical of the 1920s, did not play as long &ndash; it ran for 572 performances. "Drinking Song", with its rousing chorus of "Drink! Drink! Drink!" was especially popular with theatergoers in 1924, as the United States was in the midst of Prohibition. The Shuberts toured the production extensively in America. The original London production at His Majesty's Theatre, opened on February 3, 1926, but was not well received, closing after 96 performances; but the operetta ran for nearly a year in engagements in Sydney and Melbourne Australia in 1927–1928.

The Student Prince was revived twice on Broadway in 1931 and 1943 and in the West End in 1944 and 1968. It was revived extensively elsewhere in the US and UK in the decades following its premiere. The operetta was performed each summer at the Heidelberg Castle Festival for several decades beginning in 1974.

Ernst Lubitsch made a silent film also based on Förster's work, titled The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, starring Ramón Novarro and Norma Shearer. Its orchestral score did not use any of Romberg's score, although it did include "Gaudeamus igitur". Mario Lanza's performance on the soundtrack of the 1954 MGM film The Student Prince renewed the popularity of many of the songs. Composer Nicholas Brodszky and lyricist Paul Francis Webster wrote three new songs for the film. Two of these songs – "I'll Walk with God" and "Beloved", as well as "Serenade" – became closely associated with Lanza, although the role was played on screen by British actor Edmund Purdom, who mimed to Lanza's recordings. A more complete recording starring Robert Rounseville and Dorothy Kirsten was made by Columbia Records in 1952 and has been re-released on CD. Around the same time, Gordon MacRae recorded a 10-inch Lp of the score for Capitol. It was later repackaged on one side of a 12-inch album (The Merry Widow is on the reverse) but that album has been out-of-print since the late 1960s.

RCA Victor recorded Mario Lanza in highlights from the score, released when the singer's voice was used in the 1954 film version. Lanza later re-recorded the score in stereo for the same label, but it is the earlier mono recording that is on CD paired with selections from The Desert Song.

Reader's Digest include a selection in their album A Treasury of Great Operettas, first offered for sale in 1963. This stereo recording is available on CD. Also in 1963, as part of a series of stereo recordings of classic operettas, Capitol had MacRae and Kirsten record a full album of the score. Most of it can be heard on the EMI CD Music of Sigmund Romberg along with selections from The Desert Song and The New Moon. Around the same time, Columbia made a new stereo recording with Giorgio Tozzi, Jan Peerce and Roberta Peters. This has not been issued on CD.

The 1989 2-CD set from That's Entertainment (TER/JAY) includes much of the underscoring; it features Norman Bailey, Marilyn Hill Smith, Diana Montague and David Rendall, and is conducted by John Owen Edwards.

A recording was released by CPO in 2012 with WDR Rundfunkchor Köln and WDR Funkhausorchester Köln, conducted by John Mauceri. Dominik Wortig sings Karl-Franz, Anja Petersen is Kathie, Frank Blees is Dr. Engel, Theresa Nelles is Princess Margaret and Christian Sturm is Captain Tarnitz.

Influence

The operetta was influential in its portrayal of European Studentenverbindungen (student fraternities). The historian Marianne Rachel Sanua wrote:

<blockquote>[T]he model of the Central European student fraternity, which included beer-drinking, good fellowship, heated discussion, and physical recreation as well as political activity, had its appeal to American young men, especially those who had the opportunity to study in the universities of Germany, Austria, or Czechoslovakia. Novels and the popular operetta The Student Prince, set in the German university town of Heidelberg, fixed in the public mind the heroism, joys, and glamour of European student fraternity life.</blockquote>

Notes

Further reading

  • Bloom, Ken and Vlastnik, Frank. Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of all Time. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York, 2004.
  • The Student Prince at Musical Theatre Guide