Overview
Introduction
The Student Prince is an operetta in 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 elements of melodrama but lacks the swashbuckling style common to Romberg's other works. The plot is mostly faithful to its source.
It opened on December 2, 1924, at Jolson's 59th Street Theatre on Broadway. The show was the most successful of Romberg's works, running for 608 performances, the longest-running Broadway show of the 1920s. It was staged by J. C. Huffman. Even the classic Show Boat, the most enduring musical of the 1920s, did not play as long – 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 operetta contains the challenging tenor aria "The Serenade" ("Overhead the moon is beaming").
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. The operetta was revived twice on Broadway – once in 1931 and again in 1943. 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. The operetta was revived in the 1970s and 1980s by the Light Opera of Manhattan and in 1988 by New York City Opera. The operetta has been performed each summer at the Heidelberg Castle Festival since 1974.
