The Chocolate Soldier

The 1941 film of the same name enlists much of Straus's music but is otherwise unrelated, using a plot based on Ferenc Molnár's play The Guardsman.

[2] The main love aria, for instance, is sung by the heroine just before she meets the "other man", and the "brave" soldier turns out to be a worse coward than his unmilitaristic rival.

Shaw despised the result, however, calling it "a putrid opéra bouffe in the worst taste of 1860", but grew to regret not accepting payment when, despite his opinion of the work, it became an international success.

[4] The first English-language version premiered in New York City, translated by Stanislaus Stange, on 13 September 1909, where it was the hit of the Broadway season.

[5] Its London premiere at the Lyric Theatre in 1910, with C. H. Workman as Bumerli, Elsie Spain as Mascha and Roland Cunningham as Alexius, was also a tremendous success,[2] running for 500 performances.

In 1987, Light Opera Works in Illinois produced and recorded the operetta with a new English translation by its former artistic director, Philip Kraus, and lyrics by Gregory Opelka.

Alone in her bedroom, Nadina clutches her sweetheart's photograph and sings of her admiration and love for her "brave hussar" and longs for his return.

He recounts an incident in battle when a foolish Bulgarian officer lost control of his horse, thus leading an inadvertent cavalry charge against Serb guns that happened to have been supplied with the wrong ammunition and were thus overrun.

While the Bulgarian soldiers search the rest of the house, Aurelia, Nadina's mother, and young Mascha come to the bedroom.

By the time the soldiers have left the house and Nadina opens her bed curtains Bumerli is asleep, and the lonely women are all very taken with him.

The Colonel is wearing his favourite coat – there is some slapstick as the ladies try to stop him looking in his pocket by finding him matches and a handkerchief.

The guests gather for the wedding ceremony – including Captain Massakroff, who recognises Bumerli as the intruder he saw climb the drainpipe in Act I – in the resulting chaos Mascha produces Nadina's photograph, with its compromising message.

Any doubts among the family that Bumerli would not make a good husband for Nadina are dispelled by the revelation that he is the son of a wealthy Swiss businessman, and all ends happily.

In the original version, after the overture, the music is as follows:[9] Note: The order and placement of the songs in German differs from the English adaptation (listed below).

"; the better-known songs include "My Hero", "Thank the Lord the War Is Over", "Sympathy", "Seek the Spy", "Tiralala", "The Chocolate Soldier", and "Forgive".

The film includes the following non-Straus selections: A one-hour radio adaptation, with John Barclay as Bumerli, Gladys Swarthout as Nadina, and Nathaniel Shilkret conducting the orchestra, was broadcast in the US on May 22, 1934, on the popular program Palmolive Beauty Box Theater.

In 1955, actress Vivian Vance sang the song in the fourth-season episode of I Love Lucy titled "Ethel's Home Town".