Arizona Lady
Encyclopedia
Arizona Lady is an operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

 in two acts by Hungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán
Emmerich Kalman
Emmerich Kálmán was a Hungarian-born composer of operettas.- Biography :Kálmán was born Imre Koppstein in Siófok, on the southern shore of Lake Balaton, Hungary in a Jewish family.Kálmán initially intended to become a concert pianist, but because of early-onset arthritis, he focused on composition...

. The libretto was written by Alfred Grünwald
Alfred Grünwald (librettist)
Alfred Grünwald was an Austrian author, librettist, and lyricist. Some of his better-known works were written in conjunction with the composers Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, Paul Abraham, and Robert Stolz.After the Anschluss the family emigrated to the United States in 1940 via France...

 and Gustav Beer. It premiered, as a broadcast in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 on 1 January 1954, and on stage in Bern, at the Stadttheater, on 14 February 1954. Left unfinished
Unfinished work
An unfinished work is creative work that has not been finished. Its creator may have chosen never to finish it or may have been prevented from doing so by circumstances outside of their control such as death. Such pieces are often the subject of speculation as to what the finished piece would have...

 at the time of Emmerich Kalman's death, it had been completed by his son, Charles Kalman. It was given its American premiere, in a new English translation by Gerald Frantzen and Hersh Glagov, by Chicago Folks Operetta in July 2010, at Stage 773 in Chicago, Illinois.

Roles

Role Voice type Premiere Cast, January 1, 1954
(Conductor: Werner Schmidt-Boelcke )
Lona Farrell soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

Esther Rethy
Nelly Nettleton soprano Brigitte Mira
Roy Dexter tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

Herbert Ernst Groh
Sheriff Harry Sullivan baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...

Benno Kusche

Synopsis

The plot, set in the 1920s, concerns a Hungarian woman, Lona Farrell, whose father had emigrated to the US to search for gold. She now runs the Sunshine Ranch in Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

. As the show begins, she fires her foreman, Jim Slaughter, for having tried to kiss her, and hires a stranger, Roy Dexter from Colorado, despite the concerns of Sheriff Harry Sullivan, who suspects that "Roy Dexter" may actually be the notorious outlaw, Burt Morton. But there is one condition on Roy's employment; he must never even mention the word "love" to Lona; she's had enough of that. Despite that, the sexual tension between Lona and Roy is manifest from the beginning.

Arizona Lady is a temperamental filly owned by Lola, and part of the foreman's job is to ride her at the big race in the Arizona State Fair. Roy succeeds in taming Arizona Lady, but is thrown in the race because the girth of his saddle has been cut by Jim Slaughter, who wins the race riding Mexican Cavalier, owned by the wealthy Lopez Ibanez. As a result of a bet on the race, Lona is now engaged to Sheriff Sullivan. At their engagement party, Bonita, a hired dancer from the Paradise Bar, identifies Roy as Burt Morton, and Roy is carted off to jail as news arrives that Arizona Lady has been stolen.

In jail, Roy meets the drunken vagabond Algernon Galahed Bentschley, who leads him to a tunnel he has dug that leads, not only out of the jail, but across the border into Mexico. They proceed to the Paradise Bar, which straddles the border; on the left side, there is Prohibition, on the right, Mexico and freedom. The Sheriff turns up, and Roy says he will cross the line back into Arizona to surrender to him, but only if he can have ten minutes to speak to Lona alone. He explains that his name truly is not "Roy Dexter"—but it is not "Burt Morton", either. He is really known as the "Colorado Kid", and he has long been pursuing Burt Morton, who killed his father. The Sheriff reenters, and tells Roy that he is free to go, that Jim Slaughter, who was the real Burt Morton, has been arrested, along with Sr. Ibanez, and that Arizona Lady has been recovered. Lona asks Roy to stay, but he says that he wants no payment or reward, but that if there is one thing he wants to take away from the Sunshine Ranch, it is Arizona Lady. She agrees to let the filly go.

Three months later, the whole cast visits Kentucky, where the Derby is about to run. Lona and the Sheriff are not married yet, but make another bet; if Arizona Lady wins this time, Lona will marry the Sheriff at once. The horse does indeed win, but Sheriff Sullivan, recognizing that Lona is really in love with "Roy", declares that the wedding must go on, only with a slight change of bridegroom.

In a comic subplot, Nellie Nettleton, proprietor of a mobile general store, and young Chester Kingsbury, Jr., the son of a meat-packing millionaire who has sent him to the Sunshine Ranch to toughen him up, deal with money troubles and with Nellie's problems caused by the fact that her sister, Magnolia, has told her (Magnolia's) fiancé that her (Magnolia's) illegitimate baby is really Nellie's.
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